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Beyond typology : a museological approach of the athletes' heritage / Cristina Moriyama Swan
Edited by AISTS. Lausanne - 2017
The purpose of this study is to go beyond the typological categorisation of sport museums and halls of fame and look into the museological practices that sport heritage institutions adopt in order to display their heritage. The hypothesis was that museological practices are subjected to economic and political constraints of Sport Organisations’ agendas. In order not to limit the research to the typological aspects of the heritage institutions, the visitor’s point of view was also evaluated. The research methodology is framed by Hall’s encoding decoding communication model (1980) considering the sport heritage institutions as encoder, the exhibition as code and the visitors as decoders. Following Hall’s communication model, data from three sources of the exhibition was collected: museum professionals (encoder), visitors (decoder) and the athletes’ artefacts displayed (code). Taking The Olympic Museum of Lausanne as case study, an analysis of the data showed gaps and non-equivalences. Indeed, museological practices were used to fulfill the gaps observed, supporting a preferred reading of the exhibition that was in line with the IOC political and economic agenda which confirmed our hypothesis. In addition, we could identify a correlation between athletes’ heritage and museological practices.