Archiving Museum Exhibitions

Museums work with objects and artifacts to produce narratives, creating memories of past events, cultures, ideas. These are presented by means of exhibitions and installations to a wide variety of visitors. However, the institutional memory of these exhibits is uneven, relying on some combination of written documentation, such as books and catalogues, and on visual material, such as floor plans and slides of the objects on display. In this presentation, we will show an exploratory CD- ROM that documents an exhibition on China, "Xi'an", held in Quebec City recently, and raises some issues concerning the use of digital technologies as tools for research in museums.