The Performative Museum: Designing a Total Experience

Lindesnes Lighthouse is a well- known Norwegian tourist attraction. Few museums can compete with this windswept cape where an affection of the senses is concerned. Within the new museology and experience economy, museums have been redefined as storytellers, performers, and event-makers; above all, they are supposed to communicate with the visitors in diversely emotional ways. The staff at the lighthouse have been trained to appeal to the visitors not primarily by cognitive means, but rather in visual, tactile, as well as in audible ways. The author of Chapter 11 follows two groups of middle-class visitors to Lindesnes, one from Western countries and the other from China. It turns out that the two groups display very different preferences due to the ways their senses have been educated through their backgrounds. This chapter shows that whenever affects is on the agenda, the cultural organisation of sensibilities must be taken into consideration.