Negotiating meaning: identity, the museum and the exhibition

In post-colonial nations, the museum is a common context for the investigation of the identity of various cultural groups: the indigenous or immigrant experience, and the fight for independence are key stories. This paper will analyse a case study of an exhibition design studio that asked interior design and industrial design students to reflect on the production of identity within the museum context as the basis for designing an exhibition about an aspect of cultural identity within a national context of their own choice. The studio focused on the production of cultural identity and how that might inform design practice. The majority of students come to the design studio with the experience of visiting museums, but without any particular grasp of the political dimensions of working within the museum as an institutional site. In particular students are usually naive about the role of contemporary museums as a site of negotiated meaning and identity. The studio introduced the students to the work of Stuart Hall and the Fouauldian concept of 'discourse' as a means for reflecting on how identity is produced within a range of national cultures. More specifically students were introduced to the work of Homi Bhabha in relation to post-colonial identities. The paper discusses how the students' experience of their own cultural identity was an important source for their design work. The paper discusses the resulting student work in relation to how the form of the exhibition, not simply the content, can be a vital source of meaning in exhibition design, revealing that the exhibition designer's task is not simply a matter of communication of curatorial content, but rather must be seen as a negotiated process, with identity a key concern within a museum context