Date of Award
Fall 12-12-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Program
Global Arts and Cultures
First Advisor
Jung Joon Lee
Second Advisor
Francesca Liuni
Third Advisor
Conor Moynihan
Abstract
Object labels are key components of the knowledge production networks in American museums. But despite their sustained use in the Western museum field since the late nineteenth century, museum labels are not frequently regarded as valuable sources in scholarship on museum history and practices. In this thesis, I reposition labels in art museums as objects of value that should be studied for their important role in producing and disseminating knowledge. What can we learn about art museums by looking closely at their labels—specifically about those institutions’ values? How do labels reveal the hierarchies of value that art museums construct between works of art, information, and people? I argue that object labels in American art museums should be regarded as valuable sources of information because they reveal what matters to the institutions that write them. By looking closely at labels, we can understand which collection objects art museums see as more valuable, which narratives they consider most important for patrons to know, and which visitors are prioritized in their values.
Taking Corinne A. Kratz’s analysis in Rhetorics of Value: Exhibition Design & Communication in Museums and Beyond as the key theoretical framework that guides this thesis, I compare labels, label writing guidelines, and my own findings from art museum visits to investigate values in individual art museums and broadly in the American museum field. Enhanced by my professional experiences working at the RISD Museum and writing a label, my analysis demonstrates that labels are sites where art museums’ values as they relate to objects, narratives, and audiences are made visible through the use of technology tags, the fluctuation of interpretive information, and the inclusion of multilingual text. This examination of labels, conducted while executive censorship of labels in American museums is underway, ultimately invites critical thinking and reflection on the ways that art museums share information with visitors and what those choices reveal about their values.
Recommended Citation
Mitchell, Mary, "Looking at Labels, Examining Values: Knowledge, Narrative, and Multilingualism in American Art Museums" (2025). Masters Theses. 1527.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1527
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