ICOM International Council of Museums - Museo Estancia Jesuitica ...

El discurso museológico y la interpretación
crítica de la historia
ABSTRACT
Francisca Hernández Hernández 1 – Madrid
Any consideration about museology implies to widen the knowledge we have about the
semiotic-discursive structure that is the base of post-modern societies, because it is the
only way to give answers to their new challenges. This an effort of conceptualizing for
museology in order to exceed the interest in objects and pay more attention to thematic
exhibitions, where the less important is the real object and the most the ideas we want
to show. In fact, museography from today, so as to transmit its expositive script, must
use all narrative systems available to make easier the developing of museological
discourse. When analysing which must be the keys to elaborate a museological
discourse, we find out the problem of how guess to create a narration capable of
transmitting clearly and precisely the message inside of objects in museums.
If the content of the museological discourse is just the story we want to tell, we will
have to analyse what we want to tell and the possibilities we have to achieve it, making
it easy to understand and avoiding manipulation. To get this aim, there must be a
strong will of theoretical integration that showed how the discursive analysis of
museology tries to incorporate the perspectives and contributions of the different social
sciences. The task of the museology expert with the objects that history has left goes
further than the simple collection, and so he must rebuild the past by means of the
creation of a theoretical and visual museological discourse capable of transmitting to
citizens a message full of sense. Such narration has to be able to take the visitor to be
seduced by the historical and mythological content that is inherent to historical places
or their meaning as expressions of universes and cultures that existed in the past.
Because of this, museums must become places of memory, where could be possible to
make a criticism of the reality from the past and the present with an open attitude.
KEY WORDS: Museological discourse, narrative systems, critical interpretation,
history, memory.
1. El discurso museológico
A medida que nos adentramos en la reflexión sobre la museología nos vamos dando
cuenta de que necesitamos ampliar nuestros conocimientos sobre la estructura
semiótico-discursiva en la que se fundamentan nuestras sociedades posmodernas,
porque solamente así podremos dar respuestas a los nuevos retos que éstas nos
plantean. Esto supone para la museología un esfuerzo de conceptualización que ha de
llevarla a sobrepasar el interés centrado en los objetos para fijarse con mayor
detenimiento en las exposiciones temáticas donde lo que menos importa es el objeto
auténtico y lo que más preocupa son las ideas que se pretenden presentar.
1
Profesora de Museología y Patrimonio de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid. España.
E-mail: francisc@ghis.ucm.es
325