1 Chapter Seven Framing Effects in Museum Narratives: Objectivity in Interpretation Revisited 1 Anna Bergqvist ‘The map is not the territory’ - Korzybski Abstract Museums establish specific contexts, framings, which distinguish them from viewing the world face-to-face. One striking aspect of exhibition in so-called participatory museums is that it echoes and transforms the limits of its own frame as a public space. I argue that it is a mistake to think of the meaning of an exhibit as either determined by the individual viewer’s narrative or as determined by the conception as presented in the museum’s ‘authoritative’ narrative. Instead I deploy the concept of a model of comparison to illuminate the philosophical significance of perspective in understanding the idea of objectivity in museum narratives. 1. Introduction Museums are, among other things, sites for conveying meaning. This makes them interesting to philosophers. In particular it would be interesting to understand how, if at all, museums convey meaning through the objects exhibited in them. Here I shall not talk about the mechanics of museum display, nor say much about the nature of the putative educative function of the museum as such (until I draw out an implication at the end). My focus is rather on a methodological meta-problem about museums and the meaning of the objects exhibited that stems from a number of characteristic features of any museum’s display that we may identify as the narrative 1 Forthcoming in A. Bergqvist, V. Harrison & G. Kemp (eds.), Philosophy and Museums: Ethics, Aesthetics and Ontology. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, Cambridge University Press.