A Place for Imagery in Composing Histories: Available Means of Memory at the Gettysburg Museum

Reading The Museum

Museums are interactive sites for learning that transcend the teacher-student hierarchical model of learning and allow for a sense of self-guidance not found in the traditional classroom. Schwartz (2008) argues that museums are “one of the foremost sites for teaching and learning by visual means” (p. 27). Museumgoers can interact with museum content and discover as much or as little as they feel. Students learn how to “read” museums, how to compose through the available, multimodal means. Museum-based approaches to visual literacy education, as discussed by Schwartz, “examines how objects interact with their physical setting to form persuasive arguments that are primarily visual” (p. 34). Through the consideration of how the museum transfers these messages to audience rather than what these messages are, students may begin to understand how multiple modes (visual, textual, spatial, object) work together to create meaning.