Decoding the Visitor's Gaze: Rethinking Museum Visiting

This chapter reports preliminary findings from visitor research being executed by one of the authors in a conurbation of the English Midlands. The fieldwork consists of fifteen in-depth interviews administered at a random sample of households and with a total of circa 35 subjects. The report places the research design in the theoretical contexts of class, culture and locality, presents data from three interviews and provides a detailed analysis of one interview. The data suggest: (1) that local museums are mediators between identity and structure; (2) that museum meanings are diversely determined in relation to the class trajectories of subjects; (3) that museum visiting is to be understood as a social relationship rather than as an attribute of individuals and (4) that subjects readily conceptualize locality and identity through the visual vocabulary of museums and heritage sites.