Why Study the Media through Museums?

Roger Silverstone’s Works on the Museum and their Possibility

Abstract

　This paper aims at examining Roger Silverstone’s works on the museum,

and articulating their possibility in Media Studies. In the 1990’s, Silverstone indicated

that the characteristic of the museum as a medium is the multi-layered

disposition of media installed in/through the museum. By expanding his idea,

the museum can be conceptualized as a media complex, which is a theoretical

framework to consider both the consumption of the museum as a whole, and

that of each medium spatially embedded in the museum. This viewpoint would

also contribute to the current arguments over media consumption in public

spaces from the 1990’s.