Museum as a Cinematic Space

'Elisa Mandelli is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Link Campus University (Rome). Her primary research interests include cinema and visual arts, moving images in museums, film installations. Her writings have appeared in various edited collections and national and international journals.

In her innovative work, Elisa Mandelli traces the fascinating history of films and moving images in exhibition design. Combining careful archival research with sharp analyses of contemporary museums, The Museum as a Cinematic Space offers an invaluable addition to our understanding of the theories and practices of audio-visual media displays in exhibitions.

• Illustrations Acknowledgments Preface Introduction Part I. BETWEEN HISTORY AND MODERNITY: FILMS AND AUDIO-VISUALS IN EXHIBITIONS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Chapter 1. Cinema, museums, memory, and education ‘The ocular evidence that is truthful and infallible par excellence’: cinema, museums and the preservation of memoryThe educational role of cinemaCinema, museums, and the demands of modern lifeChapter 2. ‘A dimly-lighted corner’. Moving images in museums in the first decades of the twentieth centuryMuseums and movies: cinema at the Imperial InstituteFilms as exhibits: moving images inside the museums’ galleriesAn archive for the preservation of films at the Imperial War Museum How to show film footage? Showing the Imperial War Museum film collectionTrenches, tanks and the explosion of a mine: Mutoscopes at the Imperial War Museum (1924–38)The Mutoscopes between novelty and obsolescenceException or rule? Debating the use of moving images in museum galleriesChapter 3. Moving images in museums, world’s fairs and avant-garde exhibition design Twentieth century avant-gardes and exhibition designThe cinematism of the exhibition space: El LissitzkyCinema and the dynamism of modern life: Moholy-Nagy’s Room of the Present‘The paradise of the exhibitor’: museums and world’s fairsAudio-visual devices at the New York Museum of Science and IndustryChapter 4. The multi-media museum: film and audio-visuals in museums, 1960s–70s Museums and films from UNESCO to world’s fairsThe exhibition as a mosaic: Marshall McLuhan and Harley ParkerMuseums and the ‘AV revolution’Part II. THE MUSEUM AS A CINEMATIC SPACE: MUSEUMS AND AUDIO-VISUALS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Chapter 5. From the museum experience to the museum as an experience From objects to visitors: the virtualisation of the museum Museums and the ‘experience economy’ Moving images and the museum experience Chapter 6. Audio-visuals in exhibitions Archival footageDocumentariesReconstructions and fictional filmsVideo testimoniesChapter 7. The Museum and its spectres The mirror and the portrait: The Widespread Museum of the Resistance in TurinThe ‘ghosts’ of the witnesses: The In Flanders Fields MuseumPhantasmagoriaChapter 8. A walk through images Galleries, projections, and cinematic effects: The Trento TunnelsA film in space: Peopling the Palaces at Venaria RealeChapter 9. New interpretations of the movie theatre‘A bit like a large cinema’: The Big Picture Show at the Imperial War Museum NorthA movie theatre inside the museum: The Historial Charles de GaulleChapter 10. Touching images Touching, browsing: interactive tablesRewriting space: The Museum Laboratory of the MindInteractions / interrelationsConclusions Bibliography Index