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Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Museum Studies
Reports And Commands: Deciphering A Health Exhibition Using The Speaking Mnemonic, David H. Lee
Reports And Commands: Deciphering A Health Exhibition Using The Speaking Mnemonic, David H. Lee
Publications and Research
The Amazing You exhibition at the Tampa Museum of Science and Industry had over 400 different multimedia health exhibits. Visitors walked through life stages, from conception through death, the exhibits at first showcasing developmental milestones, then diseases and chronic conditions associated with ageing. Museum executives described the exhibition as a public health intervention that stressed disease prevention, screening and behaviour change. This piece considers the question: What makes an exhibition be a health intervention? To describe complexities of the communication environment I use a mnemonic device called SPEAKING, an acronym for ‘Scene/Setting, Participants, Ends, Act Sequence, Key, Instrumentalites, Norms and …
A Flea’S Tumescence: Alan Blum, Md, On Exhibitions, Activism, Irony, And Collaboration, David H. Lee
A Flea’S Tumescence: Alan Blum, Md, On Exhibitions, Activism, Irony, And Collaboration, David H. Lee
Publications and Research
In November 2020, I spoke with Alan Blum, MD, scholar, collector, curator, exhibitor, activist, and director of the University of Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society (CSTS). He has been creating tobacco-themed exhibitions since the 1980s—in brick-and-mortar as well as digital settings—based on a prodigious collection of tobacco-related artifacts. Before joining CSTS, as founder of Doctors Ought to Care, a national organization of concerned and outspoken physicians, Blum satirized and protested at tobacco industry–sponsored events. In addition to being an avid museumgoer, he closely follows the tobacco industry’s sponsorship of museums and exhibitions. This article contains excerpts …
The Dual Meanings Of Artifacts: Public Culture, Food, And Government In The “What’S Cooking, Uncle Sam?” Exhibition, Elizabeth A. Petre, David H. Lee
The Dual Meanings Of Artifacts: Public Culture, Food, And Government In The “What’S Cooking, Uncle Sam?” Exhibition, Elizabeth A. Petre, David H. Lee
Publications and Research
In 2011, “What’s Cooking, Uncle Sam? The Government’s Effect on the American Diet” (WCUS) was exhibited at the Lawrence F. O’Brien Gallery of the National Archives Building in Washington, DC. Afterward, it toured the country, visiting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) David J. Sencer Museum in Atlanta, the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, and the Kansas Museum of History in Topeka. The exhibition website states that WCUS was “made possible” by candy corporation Mars, Incorporated. WCUS featured over a 100 artifacts tracing “the Government’s effect on what Americans eat.” Divided into four thematic sections (Farm, Factory, Kitchen, …
Minimizing The Dangers Of Air Pollution Using Alternative Facts: A Science Museum Case Study, David H. Lee
Minimizing The Dangers Of Air Pollution Using Alternative Facts: A Science Museum Case Study, David H. Lee
Publications and Research
A science museum exhibition about human health contains an exhibit that minimizes health impacts of air pollution. Relevant details, such as the full range of health risks; fossil fuel combustion; air quality statutes (and the local electrical utility’s violations of these statues), are omitted, while end users of electricity are blamed. The exhibit accomplishes this, not through outright falsification, but through selected “alternative facts” that change the focus and imply misleading alternate explanations. Using two classical rhetorical concepts (the practical syllogism and the enthymeme) allows for the surfacing of missing evidence and unstated directives underlying multimodal rhetoric. By stating multimedia …
A Cardiology Exhibit At A Science Museum, Viewed As Speech Acts In Sequence, David H. Lee
A Cardiology Exhibit At A Science Museum, Viewed As Speech Acts In Sequence, David H. Lee
Publications and Research
An exhibit about cardiology at a science museum is an elaborate form of health communication, with messaging happening across text, pictures, models, and videos. This qualitative case study uses concepts of speech act sequencing and interpellation to explain a series of multimodal exhibits about cardiovascular health. Health exhibits are described as verbal and audiovisual arguments combining assertions of information; directives to change behavior, and designations of risk candidacy—or sequences of assertive, directive, and declarative speech acts. Visitors are targeted as heart disease candidates according to their risk factors, such as hypertension, overweight, and inactivity. Communication research focused on health exhibits …
Mandates Of Maternity At A Science Museum, From Should To Must, David H. Lee
Mandates Of Maternity At A Science Museum, From Should To Must, David H. Lee
Publications and Research
A pregnancy exhibit at a science museum is an opportunity to research how medical advice is communicated and interpreted. This paper is about the Beginning of Life area of an exhibition called The Amazing You at the Tampa Museum of Science and Industry, where exhibits are prescriptive as well as descriptive. Expectant women are urged to deliver full-term, normal birthweight babies, by behaving according to prescribed medical norms. This study provides ethnographic descriptions of the exhibits, as well as insights from museum visitors who were interviewed. The exhibits, which emphasize fetal rights and maternal duties, are interpreted and critiqued by …
Entertaining, Informing, Persuading: Figures Of Speech To Prepare For Health And Safety, David H. Lee, Frederick Steier, Wit Ostrenko
Entertaining, Informing, Persuading: Figures Of Speech To Prepare For Health And Safety, David H. Lee, Frederick Steier, Wit Ostrenko
Publications and Research
The public mandates science center exhibits that are entertaining as well as informative. In addition, exhibits can also be performative, in that they act back upon the visitors with an injunction to change their ways. We give examples from two exhibits that not only inform, but also open up space for changes in behavior and perception, particularly in arenas of public health. We look at two recent and ongoing exhibits at MOSI – “Disasterville” and “The Amazing You” - and examine the affordances suggested by figures of speech such as eponymy, hyponymy, hypernymy and retronymy. Tropological research into museum exhibits …