Museum/space/discourse: analyzing discourse in three dimensions in Denver’s History Colorado Center:

Museums have recently gained attention from cultural geographers as important sites of cultural production and reproduction. Within this growing field of ‘museum geographies’, we focus on how discourses are arranged in the three-dimensional spaces of galleries and exhibits. We argue that the spatial arrangement of text, media, and artifacts shape narrative storylines and suggest sequences, connections, progressions, and pathways within and between exhibits. In doing so, the spatial arrangement of these museum ‘assemblages’ is tied to the meaning of the underlying discourse. Looking at discourse in three dimensions offers a way for cultural geographers to contribute to an interdisciplinary study of museums, as well as to other modes of discourse where the spatial form of the text contributes to its meaning. We explore this methodology through a study of the History Colorado Center, a recently opened museum in Denver, CO. The center’s exhibits, designed to confront critical histories of the state and the Am...