    ♦ Volume 27, Number 2, 2011 51  The Thickness of Things Exploring the Curriculum of Museums through Phenomenological Touch ELIZABETH WOOD     KIERSTEN F. LATHAM    USEUMS, characterized by their collections of art and artifacts of cultural and natural history that offer visitors material evidence of the natural world, have long been consi7 dered to be sites of education and informal learning (e.g., Dana, 1999; Dewey, 1916; Hein, 1998). As such, museums can be understood to demonstrate the capacity of human activity and support the power of imagination (Carr, 2010). The information, knowledge and experiences presented in museum exhibitions are the basis for exploration of identity (e.g., Hooper7Greenhill, 2000; Peers & Brown, 2003; Watson, 2007), an invitation to experience the lifeworld (Masberg & Silverman, 1996) and the unfettered learning self (Ellsworth, 2005). The context of the museum provides visitors with sensory interactions as well as those that intersect body7mind perceptions. In this way, the museum functions as a phenomenological text that stimulates the senses through acts of perception, memory, and consciousness (Ellsworth, 2005; Morris, 1998; Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery & Taubman, 2000). Museums are places where, with a nod to Husserl, we go to see “the things themselves,” where material culture and specimens from nature provide opportunities to help visitors see and understand the phenomena of the world. Museum visitors are able to get closer to objects that help them to understand the lifeworld—sometimes of the ordinary, sometimes extraordinary, but always within the context of relationships to people, places and time. Ellsworth (2005) proposes that museums, among other designed places of learning, can move beyond the simple transmission of knowledge and “invite the sensation of a mind/brain/body simultaneously in both suspension  animation in the interval of change” (p. 17). The intersec7 tion of the material world with the imagination is a place of potential and possibility. However, despite this opportunity, museums have not been open to the potentially rich experiences af7 forded by these more holistic perspectives of sensory learning experiences (Candlin, 2004; Weisen, 2008).