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practices and uses of space, such as those associated with male homosexuality,
which threaten the functionalist model of living that the exhibition offers
(Hornsey 2004). Yet museums and exhibitions are also spaces of contact and
intermingling; indeed Bennett sees this as a crucial part of their reforming
function. While he sees working-class men as ‘the primary target’ of mid-
nineteenth century British museums’ reforming zeal, women were important
within these spaces for their ‘civilizing influence’ on men (Bennett 1995: 31–2).
However, as I will argue, museums have historically achieved their mass address
not through an attentiveness to the diversity of their audience, but instead by
universalizing socially and culturally particular experiences, judgements and
relationships with objects.

Aesthetic experiences

Museums validate certain practices of attention and devalue others. In turn,
these practices of attention validate the objects held in museums. Indeed,
museum objects, in order to retain their value, must be repeatedly legitimated
through acts of attention. Competing interpretations and value judgements
within the museums and the disciplines re-evaluate and reinforce the canons
of valued objects, devaluing some, newly valuing others, while leaving a
relatively stable core of agreed value. In this way the value of museum objects
and modes of attention mutually reinforce one another. Through this network
of relationships that make up the museum, the value of certain cultural prac-
tices and objects, and the social values of what Stuart Hall has termed the
‘dominant particular’ culture, are made to appear universal and unquestionable
(1991: 67). In this section, I look more closely at how the particular becomes
‘universal’, and the ways in which subject–object relations are staged by the
museum.
In Chapter 1, I looked at how in the eighteenth century the transfer of ritual
objects into the museum and the development of aesthetics contributed to a
change in aesthetic value, which became a mysterious quality or aura possessed
by the singular masterpiece. These developments helped establish a new aes-
thetic relationship in the art museum, where certain highly-valued objects were
attributed the power to ‘speak to the soul’ of sensitive individuals. The art
museum was also shaped by developments in aesthetics, and in particular
Immanuel Kant’s theory that aesthetic judgement could be universally valid and
pure. Art museums continue to rely on this notion. It is assumed that the
artwork needs to be viewed in the right circumstances, with little distraction,
and the viewer guided toward looking in the right way, but that, apart from this,
art objects do not require much contextualization. This view was expressed by