Public Memory and the Visual Communication of Corporate Social Responsibility: Gazing as a Consumer Biocitizen in the Johnson & Johnson Museum

In this article, I offer a visual rhetorical analysis of the Johnson & Johnson Museum (JJM). Like other corporate museums, the JJM rhetorically repurposes the visual form and experience of the public museum, including its capacity to facilitate civic rituals of collective commemoration, as a communication strategy for enhancing perceptions of its namesake’s commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR). I argue that, by branding Johnson & Johnson as a vanguard of CSR, the JJM invites visitors to see like consumer biocitizens, who view their individual purchasing habits as a means for managing public health and well-being. I identify three gazes—medical, corporate, and colonial—that orient the visuality of consumer biocitizenship within the JJM.