Visual messages and their affordances in the process of institutionalisation on the example of the Polish Vodka Museum. Pictorial representations of product’s past, presence and future in the organizational museum

The organizational museum may play important role in communication strategy and be useful in realising PR objectives, i.e. changing product category and its meaning. This study attempts to describe and classify visual messages used in a cultural institution, the newly created Polish Vodka Museum in Warsaw, that was intentionally established by commercial subject. This empirical study describes organization’s communication goals that is extension in the continuum of meaning through referring to the Polish vodka past, the present, and the future. The diagnosis of the pictorial codes’ role – in the context of the museum’s communication strategy – will be based on the novel theory, that is Meyer’s, Jancsary’s, Höllerer’s and Boxenbaum’s [2018] classification of visual message affordances in the institutionalization process. The article approximates the concept of “affordance”, stemming from the perception theory, describes its four functions along with examples of their implementation in the museum. According to the exploratory research presented in the paper, the use of visual messages is the dominant type of communication in the organization's museum. The results indicate the dominance of pictorial representations of the vodka past through visual message. This interdisciplinary work is based on the qualitative methodology for the analysis of the organizational museum, and it can be treated as part of a new trend in researching visuality in the organization, after the so-called “iconic turn” in social sciences.