Visual Communication

The visual communication evaluates the type of objects exhibited, the technical characteristics of the display, the ordering criteria and the suggested path.

None of the analyzed museums adopted exclusively a geographical or aesthetic criteria. The most frequent criteria found in combination are the thematic, geographical and chronological ones. However, we also tried to understand whether the choice of the criterion (chronological, thematic, geographic, aesthetic) had been influenced by the nature of the objects displayed in the museum. In this sense there’s no evidence of any significant relation, except for the mineralogical museums, which seem generally to prefer exclusively a thematic or systematic exhibition (indicated as an option in the category "other"). All the other museums do not have a specific visual communication strategy depending on the type of objects. This attitude shows an openness to the communication of the scientific message to a generic target and the intent to make it more comprehensible through a dissemination pointing out different views on the same subject. The result is undoubtedly a syncretic and stratified language, able to communicate the same message to a differentiated public.