The optometry of visual communication: the Museum of Vision Science

Abstract

This article uses the Museum of Vision Science and other museums of optometry as an entry point for considering the science of seeing and the seeing of science. The Museum of Vision Science, the only optometric museum in Canada, is part of an optometry school. The placement of the Museum of Vision Science within an optometry school perhaps harkens back to 19th-century examples of professional schools and museums, and this article suggests ways the museum could offer a dynamic approach to humanities understandings of vision within a science curriculum. But, more broadly, this article uses the case study of the Museum of Vision Science to consider larger possibilities for visual communication studies in conversation with optometry. Although the museum situates itself as one of vision science, it also offers a complicated ‘cultural’ history of vision. The author bridges questions of the hegemony of vision science with the practice of visual communication studies.