The value of touch and object handling in museums is little understood, despite the overwhelming weight of anecdotal evidence which confirms the benefits of physical interaction with objects.



Touch in Museums presents a ground-breaking overview of object handling from both historical and scientific perspectives. The book aims to establish a framework for understanding the role of object handling for learning, enjoyment, and health. The broad range of essays included explores the many different contexts for object handling, not only within the museum, but extending beyond it to hospitals, schools and the wider community.



The combination of theoretical analysis, policy assessment and detailed case material make Touch in Museums invaluable reading for students and professionals of museology or cultural heritage.

About the Author/Editor

Helen J. Chatterjee is Deputy Director of Museums & Collections and a Lecturer in Biology at University College London.

Contents

List of Illustrations



List of Contributors



Introduction

Helen Chatterjee



PART I What Do We Mean By Touch?

1 Museums, modernity and the class politics of touching objects

Fiona Candlin

2 Making sense of touch

Charles Spence and Alberto Gallace

3 Emotional touch: A neuroscientific overview

Hugo Critchley

4 Explorations in exploratory touch: The role of feeling in touching objects

Francis McGlone



PART II New Technologies for Enhancing Object Interpretation

5 The use of haptic interfaces in haptics research

Christos Giachritsis

6 Tactual explorations: A tactile interpretation of a museum exhibit through tactile artworks and augmented reality

Isil Onol

7 CONTACT: Digital modelling of object and process in artefact teaching Roger Doonan and Michael Boyd

8 Out of touch? Digital technologies, ethnographic objects and sensory orders

Graeme Were

9 A versatile large-scale multimodal VR system for cultural heritage visualisation

Celine Loscos

10 Touch technologies and museum access

Robert Zimmer, Janis Jefferies and Mandayam Srinivasan



PART III Touch and Memory

11 A memory for touch: The cognitive psychology of tactile memory

Alberto Gallace and Charles Spence

12 Aesthetics of touch among the elderly

Michael Rowlands

13 Reminiscence: Recent work at The British Museum

Laura Phillips

14 Getting a handle on the past: The use of objects in reminiscence work

Bernie Arigho



PART IV Therapeutic Approaches to Touch

15 Enrichment programmes in hospitals: Using museum loan boxes in University College London Hospital

Guy Noble and Helen Chatterjee

16 See, touch and enjoy: Newham University Hospital's nostalgia room, Jackie O'Sullivan

17 Measuring the 'difficult to measure'

Caroline Selai



PART V Knowledge Transfer in Object Handling

18 How accessible are museums today?

Marcus Weisen.

19 The British Museum in Pentonville Prison: Dismantling barriers through touch and handling

Jane Samuels, The British Museum.

20 The amenable object: working with diaspora communities through a psychoanalysis of touch

Bernadette Lynch.



The Future

Touch and the value of object handling: Final conclusions for a new sensory museology

Devorah Romanek and Bernadette Lynch.



Index