Technologies of public culture: Heritage encounters with photography, television and the web

Abstract

The operations through which cultural heritage institutions perform their civic and governmental roles have been identified with a logic of visual apprehension by writers such as Tony Bennett. This article explores how these institutions have ordered and regulated contact with their publics via a negotiation of different visual communication technologies, specifically, photography, television and the web. Through analysis of individual cases, it is possible to discern the shifting relationship between public heritage institutions and their audiences, as mediated by these technologies. It is argued that this approach develops a distinctive understanding of public culture and demonstrates the ways in which notions of publicness shape and are shaped by visual communication technologies in the cultural heritage context.