Many contemporary museums are challenging the traditional "hands off" ethos of the museum with innovative, interactive exhibitions. Yet such exhibitions are still exceptions to the rule of sensory restraint which is generally expected to govern the behaviour of museum visitors. Artifacts for the most part are only to be seen—not felt, smelt, sounded and certainly not tasted. Yet, this rule of sensory restraint is not intrinsic to the museum. Accounts of visits to early museums indicate that visitors interacted with and learned about the exhibits on display through all of their senses. Such multisensory interaction was not simply due to lax regulations, but was motivated by a range of social customs as well as by contemporary aesthetic and scientific norms. The present exploration of the sensory life of the early museum enlarges our understanding of the social history of museums and also contributes to the developing fields of the history and anthropology of the senses.
Constance Classen (Fri,) studied this question.