Page 132 - Museums, Media and Cultural Theory In Cultural and Media Studies

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the fact that identity is now commonly defined not just in terms of political
constituencies, culture and kinship but according to marketing categories. As
competitors in the ‘experience economy’ museums have becoming increasingly
concerned with identity defined in this way, sometimes commissioning visitor
surveys using market research categories to classify visitors. I want to use the
example of a small exhibition in a museum in my home city of Bristol in
the UK, to illustrate the incommensurability of these concepts of identity, and
the kinds of representations which arise from them.
Pow Wow was held at the Empire and Commonwealth Museum (now
‘rebranded’ as ‘Empire and Us’) in 2004–5. The Empire and Commonwealth
Museum deals with a difficult but important subject. With uneven success, and
minimal government support, it has made genuine attempts to address and
involve a culturally diverse audience in the representation of a shared history.
The museum’s own visitor studies reveal it has succeeded in attracting an audi-
ence of young adults and older people from a relatively broad range of ethnic
groups. However, until recently it did not appeal to the parents and young
children who make up the mainstay of many museum audiences (the so-called
‘buggy brigade’). Pow Wow was a deliberate attempt to develop this audience.
The exhibit represents life aboard a British ship bound for New England, and a
glimpse of the life of the peoples of that region. It was advertised as ‘a totally
immersive and interactive themed exhibition about Native Americans’ which
starred ‘Pocahontas and pirates’ (Pow Wow press release, Empire and
Commonwealth museum 2004). In this way the exhibit’s publicity connected
with established areas of interest for children and also with the popular interest
in Pocahontas (driven by the Disney film). It competes with the other leisure
activities available for this audience group: in Bristol, places like the zoo and the
city museum, but also soft-play centres, play-groups and parks, some of which
may have themed play areas such as pirate ships and tepees.
Pocahontas was named Matoaka, a member of the Powhatan confederacy,
resident of what is now the State of Virginia. The Pow Wow exhibit represents
the Jamestown colony and the encounter between settlers and the Powhatans
and the Algonquian peoples. It includes a simulation of a tepee, although the
Powhatans and the Virginia Algonquians lived in wigwams (round houses) or
longhouses. Near the tepee is a display encouraging children to choreograph
their own rain dance and another inviting them to make their own feathered
headbands. The museum shop sells plastic tomahawks and headdresses. The
exhibition text acknowledges that the tepee is not entirely accurate. Yet at the
same time it focuses on a geographically and historically specific settlement,
which is discussed in detail in labels, signs and handouts in the exhibit. This
dual and apparently contradictory address can be accounted for in terms of the
dual audience – the parents, literate and probably well-educated, and the