O lugar obscuro: a representação dos museus no cinema e o caso de Museum Hours

This article considers the following question: how does fiction cinema see the museum? The answer is structured in three parts: firstly, the analysis of the representational nature of cinema and the idea of a critique of the museum (which, after all, is the object of representation). Secondly, film research and viewing, covering the history of cinema, focused on “museum scenes” in so-called narrative cinema. The analysis of this museum representation will allow us to categorize such scenes (in which the museum is depicted as a specular space, a place of disorder and obscurity) and to demonstrate that these representations are quite different from the institution’s self-representation: while the museum sees itself as a bright and clear space, cinema sees the institution, most of the time, as a strange and obscure place. Thirdly, the analysis of the film Museum Hours demonstrates an exception to this representative discrepancy: the film proposes a world view triggered by the museum’s artworks – seen here, precisely, as a place of everyday life