Combining two really useful suggestions, I finally sat down today with my huge list of "museum ideas" and started to see how they might fall together into some kind of structure. This is my inductive approach. I banged my head against this for about five hours, and I'm not sure I'm any closer. I've arrived at three ideas; I'll lay them out here.
1. Five to seven chapters "Doing Interesting Things," each drawing from a multitude of exhibits, with an introductory chapter on the rhetoric of museums/exhibits and some kind of powerful conclusion.
2. Three Parts: Part I - two chapters on the rhetoric of museum/exhibits and the museum/exhibit as text; Part II - three to five thematic chapters drawing on small moments from the multitude of museums/exhibits I've seen; Part III - three sustained analyses that draw on and demonstrate the ways in which the themes from part II play out in specific exhibits for different ends (Race, Catalhoyuk, and the comparative case study Ocean/Atmosphere).
3. Introduction chapter on the rhetoric of museums/exhibits, followed by four to seven chapters organized thematically, each of which would begin or end with a sustained analysis of a single exhibit epitomizing the importance of that theme.
After describing the pitfalls and roadblocks to each of these approaches, Liz voted for the second approach. And after talking about it, that one made the most sense to me as well. It would integrate my broad "museum as text" reflections with the many exhibits I've seen with the sustained analyses that I think serve as the real demonstration of a useful approach.
For now, I think I can roll with the second structure, and move forward "as if" it'll work out -- heck, I know the race, catalhoyuk, and ocean/atmosphere exhibits will sustain chapters (and each for different reasons) -- now it's time to continue to think about the themes and how I can build out that middle section of the proposed book.
I still don't have a model for this sort of thing...
Thoughts welcome.
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