Abstract:
This paper examines the embodied sensual experience of visiting a museum, in particular, the feeling of
wonder experienced by the museum visitor. It argues that museums, like bodies, are suffused with an activating
spirit that has the potential to somatically transform visitors through the sensory power of exhibits.
A successful museum,then, can be regarded as a 'spirit house', a place made lively by a flowing, connective,
integrative force that can be felt by a visitor encountering the somatic and semantic configurations. This
essay combines the film theory of Fereydoun Hoveyda. the architectural theory of Bernard Cache and
Elizabeth Grosz,and the Indigenous Australian philosophy of David Mowaljarlai. to suggest a trans-disciplinary
understanding of this sense of wonder experienced by the visitor of the vivacious museum spirit
house.
