Dream Spaces

"The dream space," writes Sheldon Annis, "is the reflective experience of encountering yourself within a museum." In Memory and the Museum, Gaynor Kavanaugh argues that "dream spaces" are the point at which our inner and outer experiences meld. During the museum visit, memory and the present cease to be disparate but fuse into one singular experience. Drawing from such fields as behavioral gerontology, applied psychology, and historiography, Kavanaugh employs research from North America, Australia, and Europe to provide a critical and conceptual exploration into museums and the mind.

Gaynor Kavanaugh is head of Graduate Studies and principal lecturer in History at Bath Spa University.

Dream spaces, memories and museums; what is memory?; remembering and forgetting; memory and life stages; memory in late life; remembering and the society of others; the art of listening; oral history and museums; recording memories; working with testimony; dynamics of interviewing; collections of objects, or memories?; collecting memories and objects; reminiscence and the older adult; working with reminiscence; bearing witness; memories, dream spaces and the visit; dreaming the rational; memory spaces, dreams and museums.