Look, Look Again, and Look Beyond: Exploring Rhetoric and a Habit of Attention in Museums

This thesis is deeply interested in space, place, and rhetoric. Structured as a public-facing book that combines scholarship with personal narrative, it emphasizes the museum visitor experience and how we, as visitors, can rhetorically engage with our experiences to cultivate a practice of attention. I discuss the rhetorical nature of museums and visitor types and how storytelling and story are integral to the museum experience. I propose a rhetorical noticing framework integrating material rhetoric, rhetorical field methods, and feminist rhetorical practices with Rob Walker’s The Art of Noticing (2019). I apply this framework to the Book of Kells Experience in Dublin, Ireland. In doing so, I explore how adopting an attentive mindset enables us to see, hear, and act in ways that foster critical thinking, helping us connect more deeply with our surroundings.Additionally, noticing helps us recognize the rhetorical power of museums, tied to their roles as cultural institutions and sites of public memory. While noticing enlivens the museum experience, it can also help us recognize the imbalance, absence, and disconnect in museum spaces. This leads to reframing representation as (re)presentation and commemoration to commemoration as a feminist rhetorical act, a form of noticing, and a way to contend with the forgetting happening in museums. Look, Look Again, and Look Beyond act as symbolic and rhetorical reminders to be aware, pay attention to our surroundings, and recognize that our experiences are shaped by stories and larger, often dominant narratives.