Wilmink 1 Melanie Wilmink Professor Christine Ramsey Film 890AM August 27, 2012 The Space In–Between: Mediating Museum and Gallery The traditional museum infrastructure has always collected and displayed objects in the same way — by compiling physical artifacts in concrete spaces and describing their history for the viewer. However, in an age where almost everything we do is filtered through media technologies, how can we engage with those physical objects in the same way? Our brains have been trained to think with new cinema, internet and communications tools, completely disconnecting us from the objects and spaces around us. With this cinematic mind–frame, what does the traditional museum or gallery look like? How do we engage with these spaces and connect with the objects inside them? Alternately, how do we engage with virtual projections within real spaces? Where the real meets the virtual lies an in–between, or a theatrical stage where dialogue happens. This essay examines the ways in which this in–between is important to traditional and moving image curatorial practices, and it activates the metaphor of the natural history museum diorama as an in–between space to engage new methodologies for media art in the gallery. Our understanding of the museum as we know it today developed during the Enlightenment. The growth of scientific interest in natural history caused a related