This article looks at the use of digital kiosks and multimedia and multisensory presentation within the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington, D.C., to denaturalize assumptions about visitor and audience subject formation. Museums like the NMAI include numerous media technologies including multimedia presentations and digital kiosks as they vie for the attention of museum visitors. Proponents of digital kiosks in public spaces argue that they promote active engagement among visitors by encouraging “free-choice” learning, a process through which users make decisions about the content reviewed. This article argues that “free-choice” learning makes several assumptions regarding subject formation and that these assumptions constrain understanding of how media technologies shape meaning making potential in indigenous museums. It suggests that the existence of digital kiosks and multimedia presentations indicates disparate assumptions about visitor subjectivity and that these media are integral to the “techniques of the self” performed by the museum visitor as a multicultural citizen.
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