The science museum as a space for the provocation of the senses

Abstract

This research had as its theme the aesthetic education and as an objective to discuss how the science museum can also be a space of provocation of the senses, of aesthetic education. Art museums are arguably places of aesthetic education and science museums are generally related to spaces of knowledge, with a focus on the intelligible and not the sensitive. This qualitative research took place at the Oceanographic Museum of the Vale do Itajaí University, located in Balneário Piçarras, Santa Catarina, Brazil, and the data collection instruments were researchers’ field diaries, photographs and interviews with the museum curator. The analysis of the interview and the diary was based on the content analysis of Franco (2008) and the images according to the concepts of punctum and studium, based on Barthes (2010). The theoretical support counted on Bachelard (2000), Franklin (2019), Heidegger (2015) and Martins (2012, 2014), among others. As a result, it was possible to show that: the oceanographic museum has aesthetically planned spaces, whose organization, lighting and exploration of sounds affect the subject, causing him/her to experience. It was also identified that the choices made by the curators were intentional to raise public awareness and that they enabled spaces and objects to be proposers of experiences because they expand the aesthetic potential of the museum. However, as the experience is an individual movement, not everyone can be affected by it.