The dream space, writes Sheldon Annis, "is the reflective experience of encountering yourself within a museum." In Memory and the Museum, Gaynor Kavanaugh argues that "dream spaces" are the point at which our inner and outer experiences meld. During the museum visit, memory and the present cease to be disparate but fuse into one singular experience. Drawing from such fields as behavioral gerontology, applied psychology, and historiography, Kavanaugh employs research from North America, Australia, and Europe to provide a critical and conceptual exploration into museums and the mind.

Bringing together theory from disparate fields and drawing on research, this is a study of memory and the museum. It explores what Sheldon Annis referred to as the "dream space", the non-rational, affective and reflective experience of encountering material and ourselves within the museum.