Chapter 2, Part One: The Live Creature and “Etherial Things”

Unfortunately, for the last five days I have been suffering from a severe cold that has kept me from delving more fully into my independent study. I will try my best to regain some ground!

Upon reading Chapter 2 of Dewey’s text, I’ve realized that perhaps not all of the chapters in Art as Experience will be of particular use/interest to me as a museum educator. As a result, I will be pulling out portions of his text that I have found most complementary to my current interests and studies.

Dewey begins Chapter 2 with the following quotation:

“The Sun, the Moon, the Earth and its contents, are material to form greater things, that is, etherial things—greater things than the Creator himself made.” -John Keats

Let's keep this on the back burner for a moment...

The main question under investigation in this portion of Dewey's text is why the attempt to make a connection between art (the higher, more refined things of experience) and the basic vitals of experience is often seen as a betrayal of the value of artistic creation (20). Why can't the fine arts be connected with common life without individuals thinking that the worth of the fine arts has been diminished? What is so harmful about connecting more developed forms of experience with its roots in the common?

As Dewey claims, "life is compartmentalized and the institutionalized compartments are classified as high and as low; their values as profane and spiritual, as material and ideal" (21). And, so it is with the world of art. Ultimately, this compartmentalization "brings about a separation of that mode of activity commonly called 'practice' from insight, of imagination from executive doing, of significant purpose from work, of emotion from thought and doing" (21). No matter which way you cut it, any sort of separation from the grounding forces of the "common" serves to inhibit the natural flow of life and learning.

Drawing upon this notion, Dewey relates a description of one's senses to the problem at hand. He states, "In much of our experience our different senses do not unite to tell a common and enlarged story. We see without feeling; we hear, but only a second-hand report, second hand because not reinforced by vision. We touch, but the contact remains tangential because it does not fuse with qualities of senses that go below the surface. We use the senses to arouse passion but not to fulfill the interest of insight, not because that interest is not potentially present in the exercise of sense but because we yield to conditions of living that force sense to remain an excitation on the surface. Prestige goes to those who use their minds without participation of the body" (21). Here is a tragic tale of a stunted growth caused by one's inability to connect more refined experiences to those basic in us all.

I was really struck by this statement for a variety of reasons, but primarily for what it can mean to those of us who strive to create the ideal learning environments for those we teach. What could our students be losing out on if we fail to connect the information we teach them to what they already know? This brings us back to an earlier theory of Dewey's expressed in Experience and Education that suggested that all knowledge in order to truly prove worthy must connect to the previous experiences undergone by the learners, a process that sows the seeds of life-long learning. I often wonder what the repercussions of our inability to make these connections with the fundamental qualities of life might be. If we don't connect the information we provide our students with those things that have gone before (those things that are basic in all of us), is there really any reason to teach? Why teach if what we teach is un-relatable? The heart of the matter is that information taught to our students only truly becomes alive and useful if tied to experiences already had. If we remember the inherent power of our students to transform mundane information into knowledge of extreme personal worth, how could we possibly ignore this as an imperative tool for educating?

Investigating a Quotation

“Experience in the degree in which it is experience is heightened vitality. Instead of signifying being shut up within one’s own private feelings and sensations, it signifies active and alert commerce with the world; at its height it signifies complete interpenetration of self and the world of objects and events. Instead of signifying surrender to caprice and disorder, it affords our sole demonstration of a stability that is not stagnation but is rhythmic and developing” (18).

So what is experience according to John Dewey?

1) Experience is an increased sense of living, seeing the world as valuable.

2) Experience is active; it means exploring the world.

3) Experience means an integration of oneself with the people, things, and events in the world around them. It is a give and take situation.

4) Experience is a form of stability through the constant growth of oneself.

What do these definitions of experience help us to understand about the world of museums? Primarily, it helps us to gain an understanding of what our visitors should be doing within our exhibits and programs. First, we must cultivate within our visitors a sense of wonder and excitement with the information about the world that we are presenting to them. Second, we need to offer them opportunities to experience these feelings through physical, mental, and emotional exploration of the content we are providing. Third, a relationship must be formed between our visitors and what they are experiencing. Together, these three steps allow us to set a standard of behavior for our patrons, one in which continuous growth is the core principle.

This process is not an easy one to fully complete. I would say that museums do a wonderful job at getting individuals excited and inquisitive. They do well at promoting exploration. However, they aren’t always particularly successful at creating enduring relationships between visitors and the content presented—ones that bring the visitor back for more. If museums focused more intensely on making these connections, the possibilities would be endless and the results remarkable. I would love to see us get to the point where step four would be a consistent product of museum experiences.

My last comment concerns the nature of this process. I find it to be a cyclical process. As our visitors form this “stability of constant growth” within themselves, they are more apt to see the world as a laboratory of learning, a place swarming with exciting avenues of exploration. Once this mindset is in place, exploration begins, and thus the cycle repeats itself. What does that tell us about museums? It tells us that our influence can be more widespread than first thought.

Taking a Mini Break from Dewey: AAM’s Webinar, “Understanding Life Stages of the Museum Visitor”

Today I was able to take part in “Understanding Life Stages of the Museum Visitor,” a webinar sponsored and organized by EdCom of AAM. Many things covered in this session reflected research I have already read about in the Center for the Future of Museum’s white paper “Museums and Society 2034.” Instead of going over things I have already pondered and processed, I will re-cap some of the most interesting tidbits of the webinar.

1) Majority Minorities: We all know from looking around us that the demographics of the world are ever changing and doing so at a rapid pace. Currently, 9/10 of the museum population happens to be Caucasian. What is interesting to note is how in 25 years the population of the United States will be 50% Caucasian and 50% “Minority groups,” meaning that museums need to broaden their audience base quickly in order to not see a drastic decline in attendance numbers in the years ahead.

This really caught my attention. Can you imagine 50% of the American population perhaps not speaking English as their native language? Given the way that most museums currently to not do too well truly integrating minority groups into their membership bases, how much worse could it be in the future? We need to be making the necessary changes now not to accommodate but to serve these soon to be majority minorities.

2) Who are we falling short with?
Out of all minority groups, it has been discovered that both African Americans and Hispanics are the most under served demographics within the museum-going population. This doesn’t bode well for the future, for which researchers suggest that the Hispanic population will be the dominant minority group.

3) Museum Advocates vs. Core Visitors
The distinction made between museum advocates and museum core visitor was perhaps the most interesting segment of the webinar. Although both groups are repeat visitors/members of the museum, they have different motivations, expectations, and levels of personal engagement with the museum community and within their own interactions with museum galleries. Given the fact that I am working on understanding how to evaluate museum advocacy for my internship at the Denver Art Museum, the topic of museum advocates surely struck a chord.

Researchers from Reach Advisors, Inc. described museum advocates in the following way:

a. They love to come to the museum often.

b. They have a high level of curiosity, and serve to nurture this quality in their children as well.

c. They are different from core visitors in terms of age (mostly older), but have no other socio-demographic differences worth mentioning.

d. They have “omnivorous museum-going habits,” and are what you might call cultural consumers.

e. They have active social lives.

f. They are socially and environmentally aware.

g. They tend to be more philanthropic, and donate their resources to the museum due to that motivation.

h. They are significantly happier with museums.

i. They visit museums to fulfill their own self-interest, curiosity.

The two main points that I would like to pull out from the list above are that 1) museum advocates go to museums to fulfill their own self-interest, curiosity 2) they desire to nurture this quality in their children. I find it interesting that this group of museum-goers has a characteristic key to museums retaining them as avid supporters: a passion for learning. Although they are not a fully self-sustaining population, in many ways they are; they have an inherent drive that continues to bring them through our doors, and they have the future of their children as a top priority. Interestingly, the researchers from Reach Advisors, Inc. suggested that in order for museums to create more advocates within their visitor bases they must begin to build family audiences. This ensures that advocacy isn’t generational but extends throughout a family’s history.

4) The Magic of 7 Year-Olds

Researchers noted that the median/mean of the earliest museum memory for visitors is roughly the age of 7. 2/3 of these memories include one or both parents, and ¼ of the memories were categorized as school field trips. This tells us a lot of important things, but the most intriguing to me is that 2/3 of meaningful experiences happened with a least one parent present. There is some sort of magic of 7 year olds, but there is even a greater magic in what they can accomplish emotionally and intellectually with a family member present.

The researchers also defined these museums where these magical moments occurred as “Sticky Museums,” or museum that serve to stick in the minds of their visitors. 1/3 of the earliest museum memories for 7 yr-olds happen at natural history museums. Apparently, these memories generally concern “static exhibits that promote internal creativity/imagination.” Less than 5% of these memories were hands-on activities. INTERESTING! So, this suggests that there needs to be a balance between interactive components and static, large-scale museum exhibits/components. Maybe static components aren’t the most educational but they are the most memorable! This is NOT a plug for including more dioramas in your museum…

5) Moms and Dads

Only 1/3 of moms bring their spouses with them when they visit the museum. This is another scary statistic given the fact that many women are becoming the primary bread-winners in their homes and many fathers are staying home to take care of their children. If dads aren’t going to the museums with their wives and kids now, they certainly will not choose to take their children voluntarily without their spouses.


Overall, this webinar brought to my attention several statistics that are key indicators of where the shifts are occurring in our museum visitor population. Unless we gain a grasp of our visitors, we serve without purpose, understanding, and a sense of reality.