Uwaga i uważność w muzeum

The article explores the category of attention in the process of visiting museum exhibitions, discussing it in three contexts: (1) studies of visitors’ focus on a specific content; (2) understanding the museum as an ‘attention discipline’ institution; and (3) specific phenomenology of attention during a museum visit, i.e. an attempt at a nonevaluative description of cognitive processes that occur when visiting the museum. While behavioural research (track-and-time studies) defined the basic principles that guide visitors’ behaviour at exhibitions, the explanation for what motivates this behaviour is limited. By focusing on mechanisms of power in the museum, the second approach – derived from Foucault’s theory and developed by Tony Bennett – introduces the concept of exhibition complex. It allows the author to describe more precisely the process of claiming the category of attention by visitors themselves and using it for their own purposes. This is how the author explains the growing popularity of ‘mindfulness’, a phenomenon largely hoped to refresh the way in which museums operate.