Rhetorics of ValueCorinne A. KratzLabel: Duke University PressDescription: In Rhetorics of Value Corinne A. Kratz explores how exhibition design creates and conveys values that have the potential to touch educate and engage visitors. Drawing on case studies from the Victoria and Albert Museum museums in South Africa and Kenya a Hawaiian resort hotel and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture among others Kratz shows how exhibits help shape and narrate cultural categories values and histories while provoking questions and evoking memories and experiences. She crosses contexts to consider ethnographic history and art exhibits in national and community museums and other display settings. Through these examples Kratz traces how exhibition designers combine objects texts images lighting audio space and narratives to craft a complex multilayered communicative form that visitors experience as they move through museums. By investigating the relationship between audience reception and exhibition design strategies Kratz contends that through design exhibits can shape the ways we know the stories we tell and our contours of meaning and engagement.
