Page 93 - Museums, Media and Cultural Theory In Cultural and Media Studies

MEDIA || 77

people’s everyday lives into a graphic exhibition form readily understood by
partially literate and illiterate people. The Isotype scheme took inspiration
from Egyptian hieroglyphs and used visual icons to communicate statistical and
factual information. The aim was educational, conceived along democratic
lines. Neurath distinguished between his approach, which he termed the
‘humanization’ of knowledge, and ‘popularization’. While popularization
involves simplification of complex knowledge, humanization starts from
people’s everyday knowledges and experiences, avoiding technical terms with-
out simplifying (Neurath 1973: 231–2). Neurath believed it was possible to
separate neutral or objective statements from argument and opinion. The Isotype
system was not intended to present arguments, but to arm people with neutral
statistical information from which they could form their own arguments.
Neurath saw education as both the handing on of knowledge and of cer-
tain attitudes and techniques, notably the ability to meditate on matters (to
analyse and contemplate, to think critically) which requires a certain amount
of quiet, and habits of research and arguing (1973: 233). He was critical of
those who too easily fell for the latest technology, arguing instead that each
medium had advantages and disadvantages for educational purposes. Each
medium has its own potential and its own properties. Film, for instance, has
the benefit of being able to show movement, but its time-based nature means it
is difficult for viewers to use film to make comparisons: a process crucial to
education (Neurath 1973: 238). Museums and exhibitions had potential advan-
tages over other media, which were held back by the conventional form they
took:

Exhibitions and museums have their characteristics distinguishing them
from book illustrations, lantern slides or films. Visitors, for example, can
stand around an exhibit, look for longer or shorter times, compare one
with another. A filmgoer is presented with a set sequence, a scene appears
and goes by quickly, he cannot turn back the pages like the leaves of a
book. Museums are free for everybody, groups and individuals can go
there, with or without a guide; their discussion could be supported by the
visual material itself. Museums could play an important part in education.
In fact they very often do not. Visitors are mostly overwhelmed and bored.
Visits to museums are often ‘ritual’ visits. In museums, some people want
to show something, directors, donors, etc.; they are more feudal than any
other people in a democratic society.
(Neurath 1973: 238)

The museum’s democratic potential could be realized only if its exhibition
function could be separated from ritual and from the self-serving display of
wealth and knowledge. Neurath and his colleagues reinvented the museum.