The Importance of the Absence of Interpretation in the Museum Context in Promoting Children’s Participation in the Meaning-Making of Artworks

Abstract

From its inception, the discipline of art history has involved developing and applying modes of interpretation to derive meaning from works of art. Art museums represent an institutionalized model of interpretation. Specialist guides and exhibition catalogs all represent ways of interpreting and understanding the meaning of works of art. However, based on a constructivist system of knowledge, such interpretations create preconceptions about the meaning of the work. It does not contribute to the diversity of its expression. For school-age children at the peak of their creativity, an overemphasis on the presence of interpretation removes their motivation to interpret on their own, making them become replicators rather than producers of the meaning of their work. At the same time, their contribution to the meaning of the work that their unique way of intuitively responding to it is ignored. This paper will, therefore, first argue for the importance of children in the multiple productions of meaning in works of art. It will then build on Davis and Gardner’s “Three-Window Approach” to show how the absence of expert discourse in museums (referred to as the absence of interpretation) facilitates the participation of schoolchildren in the meaning-making of works of art.