‘I think I know a little bit about that anyway, so it’s okay’: Museum visitor strategies for disengaging with confronting mental health material

Authors

  • Lachlan Dudley Australian National University, Canberra

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29311/mas.v15i2.839

Abstract

Visitor engagement at museums is an area that has received significant attention from museum practitioners and academics over the last decade. However, very few studies have sought to understand how and why visitors may actively employ strategies to shut down attempts to elicit deep emotional engagement with museum material and messages. This paper looks at an exhibition in a major museum in Australia that discusses mental health and illness. It discusses the high rates of emotional disengagement that were found amongst 172 visitors who were faced with emotionally confronting material and argues that emotions enabled, as well as hindered, constructive, critical reflection amongst visitors.


Key words: Mental-health, Museums, Engagement, Disengagement, Empathy

Author Biography

Lachlan Dudley, Australian National University, Canberra

Lachlan Dudley is a third-year, PhD student at the Australian National University in Canberra under the supervision of Dr. Laurajane Smith. His PhD is interested in making sense of the varied ways that museum visitors make sense of difficult material and messages at exhibitions that focus on mental health and illness. It has a particular interest in looking at the different strategies that visitors use to engage, as well as disengage, with mental health material.

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Published

07/12/2017

How to Cite

Dudley, L. (2017). ‘I think I know a little bit about that anyway, so it’s okay’: Museum visitor strategies for disengaging with confronting mental health material. Museum & Society, 15(2), 193–216. https://doi.org/10.29311/mas.v15i2.839

Issue

Vol. 15 No. 2 (2017)

Section

Articles

License

Copyright remains with the author(s) of the article. This article can be re-used according to the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0  licence.