MusLi (Museums Literacy) - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

24 MusLi - No qualifications needed: museums and new audiences
A “mediation” 1 of values is consequently necessary as a preamble to an open, curious and trusting
attitude of the non-users towards the museum’s message.
Clearly, the opportunity or also the legitimacy of similar proposals for “mediation” will arise from
an effective balance between “values of exchange” and the cultural and civil goals ascribed to each
museum that need to be reaffirmed. However, the range of cultural, civil and educational benefits that
participation in a museum event can lead to, whatever the initial audience motivations may be, fully justifies
more extensive experimentation than that conducted by these kinds of approaches in the past.
Moreover it is worth adding that this kind of inviting and attractive approach of the museum brings it
closer to audiences that are less trusting and more subject to feelings of general inadequacy towards
the “cultural” world in its dignified and traditional sense (see findings arising from the collective interviews
carried out in Bozen within the Touch of Baroque project). It can therefore help in reducing at
least part of those “start-up” costs involved in the decision to visit that are particularly high for audiences
to whom the museum object, that is to say the cultural experience, seems precluded, inaccessible
and for whom the related costs in terms of low self esteem, feelings of exclusion and discontent
can completely outweigh the perceived benefits.
Pay attention to the individuals’ “systems of constraints”
In order to relate to strata or groups of visitors who are supposedly culturally, socially or personally
deprived, it is essential to imagine the system of constraints to which they may be subjected.
Sometimes there are physical constraints – as in the case of the older persons who can have problems
travelling to the museum, or clearly of groups in particular conditions such as prisoners as in the Louvre’s
example – or cognitive, psychological and cultural constraints that can often be quite common
and really strong, though more hidden. Especially in the latter case, the impact of such constraints on
the effectiveness of communication and on the quality of the experience enjoyed in the museum is
potentially huge and decisive for the success or the failure of the museum visit.
For instance, low cultural capital can easily, even if not necessarily, be translated into a plurality of
cognitive, expressive and operational barriers, that, apart from reducing the repertoire of historical and
historical-cultural references accessible to a person, impact more generally on a person’s capacity to
represent, analyse, understand and modify reality. The data, confirmed by international surveys, on the
low rate of literacy and numeracy among large strata of the population, especially those who only attended
compulsory schooling, should at least serve as warnings about the cognitive and operational
1 The word “mediation” refers to the notion of “médiation culturelle” in the French context on which reflections about the policy of opening up the institutions of cultural
production and diffusion to audiences have been based for the past 20 years.
Cfr.: E. Lehalle, E. Caillet, A l’approche du musée, la médiation culturelle, PUL, 1998 ; E. Caillet, Accompagner les publics, L’Harmattan, Paris, 2007.
Nevertheless the expression, with its specific semantic meanings, does not have an exact translation in English; thus it is generally replaced with the undoubted notion of
“interpretation”.
In this case, the expression “mediation” has been chosen in order to refer precisely to the identification of a mid- and meeting point between museums and audiences.