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Hear writer, museum scholar and Hyperallergic opinion’s editor Seph Rodney discuss the ideas in his latest book The Personalization of the Museum Visit: Art Museums, Discourse, and Visitors.
The Personalization of the Museum Visit examines a fundamental shift in institutional behavior in museums located in the United States and the United Kingdom. Contending that art museums have moved toward a new paradigm of public engagement, it posits that modern museum visitors are treated as self-directed “clients”, with the agency to make meaning for themselves. The book then considers how this change has come about, examining factors such as the onset of a new museology, an experience economy, and a marketing revolution. Drawing on extensive research undertaken at Britain’s Tate Modern, the book examines a range of issues, including visitor engagement, curatorial practice, and museum management. RSVP required. Zoom details will be sent via email confirmation.
Seph Rodney, PhD was born in Jamaica, and came of age in the Bronx, New York. He is a senior critic for Hyperallergic, and writes on visual art and related issues. He has also written forTheNew York Times, CNN Op-ed pages,American Craft Magazine and NBC Universal, and penned catalog essays for Crystal Bridges Museum, the Mississippi Museum of Art, Teresita Fernandez, Meleko Mokgosi, and Joyce J. Scott. He can be heard weekly on the podcast “The American Age”. His book,The Personalization of the Museum Visit, was published by Routledge in May of 2019. In 2020 he won the Rabkin Arts Journalism Prize.
