The Other Museum: The Experience of The Interior Space at The Adaptive Reuse Museum, The Institution and Its Historically Preserved Building.

Abstract

Human memories are great ignition for any idea or account of historic nostalgia. We rely on our memories (Locke, 1796), senses (D. Hume, 1896) and feelings (J. H. Falk, 2009) to put together a vivid image of a particular lived experience. In the museum our sense of space is gargantuan. We tend to feel small (Beadle, 2000), in awe of what we see (Marsh, 2004), and in search of that object or logical form which our private narrative is hungry for (Garoian, 2008; Langer, 1957). The physical context of any museum experience is rendered in the physical environment offered by the museum. Therefore, this research looks into the personal experience inside the adaptive reuse museum. The museum investigated is the Tate Modern, London. This qualitative study is autoethnographic that is structured according to material culture (Attfield, 2000; Prown, 1982) and uses the artistic production of arts-based research in parts (Leavy, 2009). The study is situated as a crossline between the fields of museums and heritage preservation, where the interior space of the museum’s adaptive reuse building is investigated as the core artefact, hence the use of the adaptive reuse concept as a major data source. The Tate Modern is looked at as a performative site for the engaged personal experience (Garoian, 2008), as it encompasses two museums in one; the historical shell (Wong, 2017) as one artefact museum, and the contemporary art collection incubated inside that industrial adaptive reuse shell as the other.