In my dissertation, I examine the traditional methodology of installing and interpreting an art museum period room. The evolution of a methodology is a dynamic process. I wanted to display a method for creating and linking lived experience that would keep in mind critical developments in art education and ethnography. The empirical focus is the Régence Room, but the ethnographic experience, though common to traditional qualitative methods of collecting data, is represented as an arts-based

more »

... graphic drama. Representing my research in this manner is my attempt to add a new approach to the pedagogy of period room interpretation, a rather underdeveloped topic. I acknowledge that it is a fairly esoteric one, potentially attracting a select few among the readers for whom I am writing: art educators and museum administrators. I am advocating making the Getty Museum's Régence Room an interesting, meaningful experience for museum visitors. My aim is to connect with readers who wonder about the meaning(s) of museum period rooms: what are they? why do museums have them? how do they relate to my life, my students' lives, visitors' lives, and our experiences? Research Questions My assumption is that the Régence Room-an art museum period room-is a passive, isolated space, in the sense that "if a museum is first of all a place of things, its two extremes are a graveyard and a department store, things entombed or up for sale"