Museum Management and Curatorship (1992), II, 115-116

Editorial Visual Literacy and Museums

In the long-running debate on education in the English-speaking world, not least in the United Kingdom and the United States of America, the issues have tended to become unnecessarily confused as a consequence of the careless use of words, not least by a failure to differentiate clearly between education and training. Today it is generally accepted that museums have a role in education, as distinct from training, but the precise nature of the former role, and the limitations thereby imposed, are highly controversial and will be addressed at greater length another day. On the other hand, visual literacy is integral to the basic processes of obtaining information from museum objects themselves, as against traditional museum labels and other modes of communication now being exploited. Thus a clear understanding of the modes of communication, including visual literacy, is essential in the provision of museum services.

Today the goals of the education processes to which young people in the United Kingdom and the United States of America are exposed are that they will emerge articulate, literate and numerate, i.e. able to communicate verbally, through the written word and by means of numbers. This is in contrast to the quatre Zangues of French education which adds to the anglophone modes of communication that of visual literacy, or graphicacy as one school of geographers has termed it. With these modes of communication the literate person is able to communicate by means of reading and writing, and the articulate by means of listening and speaking, while the numerate person understands numbers and can manipulate them. Visual literacy involves the ‘reading’ and making of two- and three-dimensional objects which embody and transmit information. Familiar two-dimensional examples include diagrams, plans, maps, drawings, graphs, symbols, etc., while the three-dimensional objects encompass the whole spectrum of artefacts, to which are added the products of the natural world. In this context the work of art is just one of the manifestations of this mode of communication, although it includes many of the greatest products of human creative genius.

Training the student to be numerate does not necessarily make him into a fully fledged mathematician, just as there is a clear difference between basic literacy and the inspired products of a creative writer, and it is consequently customary to differentiate between means and content. Basic skills in a mode of communication can be taught, but not the content which is born of a personal voyage of discovery. Without the means the content remains uncommunicated or largely wasted, but, despite appearances to the contrary, no amount of communication skill can forever conceal significant lack of content. Museum objects, including works of art, are selected, conserved, researched and made available to enquirers because of their information content, and the skills needed to ‘read’ a piece of machinery are basically the same as those to ‘read’ a work of art, although the processes take place within different intellectual environments. That skill to read a map or plan or drawing for its information content, and to communicate information to others through the medium of two-dimensional images is developed by the geographer, engineer and

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scientist, as well as the artist and choreographer, and yet in the English-speaking world the efforts to teach on a systematic basis such skills to young people as a basic component of their education have been strangely half-hearted. Much of the problem is due to misplaced uncritical encouragement of total freedom of expression for young children as ‘Art’, unaccompanied by any parallel training in the practical skills of visual communication in either direction. Children are rarely encouraged to gain the manual facility needed to communicate meaningfully by means of even a simple diagram before self-indulgent ‘Art’ is squeezed out of their curricula. Similarly, they rarely receive any formal training in how to use their eyes and understand visual evidence, unless they are fortunate enough to study biology or geography.

The traditional museum label alongside the object provides information through the written word and thus requires literacy on the part of the visitor if it is to communicate that information. However, that information is not provided in a vacuum and it is intended to assist the visitor in ‘reading’ the object to gain information directly from it. Partial literacy and reluctant literacy have encouraged museums to replace the written word with the spoken word, thereby utilizing the often higher degree of articulacy of their visitors. More information may thereby be imparted, but without visual literacy the visitor will still have gained little from the direct contact with the object which is the r&on d’h-e of visiting a museum. Observation of museum visitors all too often reveals that they will listen and read, but not look.

A reasonable standard of visual literacy is a basic skill for life which should be the right of all industrious pupils, but the responsibility for imparting those communication skills is that of the educational system at school level, not the museums which require them for the meaningful use of their collections.