The Museum Experience in Picturebooks as a Challenge for Boys and Fathers

Abstract

Representations of museums in children's literature put together stories of encounters between visitors, on the one hand, and museum spaces and exhibitions, on the other; they are, therefore, educational in nature. This study focuses selectively on multimodal picture books with such narratives, aimed primarily - but not exclusively - at young children, and links the exploration of their educational content with an investigation of the ways in which they reproduce or challenge social models of masculinity in the museum context. The museum setting turns out to be fertile ground for the narrative quests of heroes who challenge the rules and interact with art as lone travelers or alongside others. In fact, these are intertextually linked not only to traditional boys’ literary genres such as adventure fiction, but also to ideological premises of the Western tradition in general. It is these premises that impart a gendered dimension to the concepts of culture, art, knowledge acquisition, creativity, and subjectivity. In the most recent of these books, action also centers on family relations and in particular the relationship of father and son.

Regarding the theoretical approach, the study draws on a combination of elements from literary theories developed in the broader context of semiotics, cultural criticism, and gender studies.