Staniszewski’s writing carefully brings to life how museum installations reflect the social and cultural context of moments in history. This writing will play a crucial role in expanding the interest in the development of museum studies and the museum’s position within the history of visual culture.
• The museum’s exhibition designs since its founding in 1929
• The display of power is not simply a history- an exploration of the ideological
• MOMA= a symptom of larger historical amnesia.
• Social and historical
The Power of Display by Mary Anne Staniszewski
This anthology focuses on the agency of exhibition choices in creating and dissemination knowledge. According to the editors, the narrative of exhibitions is a fragmentary fiction, shaped to the aims and objectives of the exhibition’s designers and curators. The Editors also made a distinction between thinking critically about exhibitions and thinking critically about museums, two interconnecting but separate entities. Exhibitions may be temporary, and exist outside transition museum spaces.
Mapping International Exhibitions’ by Ferguson and Greenberg
In his article, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” author Langdon Winner explores the different views on the relationship between technological advances and society. He defines the differences between the theories of technological determinism- the idea that “technology develops as the sole result of an internal dynamic and then, unmediated by any other influence, molds society to fit its patterns”- and social determinism, which suggests that “technical things do not matter at all” and that “once one has done the detective work necessary to reveal the social origins-power holders behind a particular instance of technological change-one will have explained everything of importance”. Winner also suggest a theory that seems to land between the two extremes of technological and social determinism. This theory of technological politics suggests that is it necessary that we take time to seriously consider technical artifacts “rather than [reducing] everything to the interplay of social forces” and that “we pay attention to the characteristics of technical objects and the meaning of those characteristics”.
After defining these concepts, Winner suggests that there are two ways in which artifacts can contain political properties. “First are instances in which the invention, design, or arrangement of a specific technical device or system becomes a way of settling an issue in the affairs of a particular community” and “second are cases of what can be called ‘inherently political technologies’, man-made systems that appear to require or to be strongly compatible with particular kinds of political relationships”. Winner proceeds to give examples of each type of sociopolitical significance.
While searching around online for ideas on political artifacts, I came across this article which I think fits in perfectly with Winner’s essay. The article is about an artist, Linda Hesh, who back in 2008 created two benches to be placed in different public spaces all around Washington DC in October (election season!). I could try to describe the benches but I think I will let this photo speak for itself:
Do Artifacts Have Politics? By Langdon Winner
Spaces of experience: art gallery interiors from 1800 to 2000 by Charlotte Klonk, 'The Dilemma of the Modern Art Museum' pp. 172-211
The gallery designs of the 19th century were shaped primarily by scientific theories: Goethe’s discussion of colour had museum directors calibrating their walls to match the dominant hues in their painting collections; later, in the 1890s, Wilhelm Wundt’s stimulation experiments prompted a scramble to eliminate ‘sameness’ in gallery architecture. Such scientific considerations were intertwined with social and political questions. Were spectators to be treated as a liberal body politic that could learn, in galleries, the art of citizenship? Or were they individuals seeking intimate, emotionally charged encounters with masterpieces? At the beginning of the 20th century, the latter view came to dominate, leading to rapid changes in display strategies: art works were given more breathing room; period details and furniture were removed; patterned papers and colour were banished from the walls. This story, as Klonk tells it, is almost exclusively German, populated by figures such as the gallery directors Wilhelm von Bode, who was inspired by collectors’ homes, and Ludwig Justi, who hung canvases extremely low down and (radically!) in a single row.
But with the ascent of a Weimar ‘culture of pure exteriority’, in which functionalist shop window displays contributed to the spectacle of the street, the main tenets of gallery display changed once again. Klonk’s book excels in tracing this evacuation of distinctiveness, though it also takes on a polemical tone. It is clear that she admires Bauhaus-era designs for ‘collective experience’, such as those by Herbert Bayer, Friedrich Kiesler, El Lissitzky and others. It is equally obvious that she laments how quickly they were neutered and co-opted, especially by Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and his corporate-minded board members at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Somewhat perfunctory discussions of documenta, artists’ installations and recent ‘starchitect’-designed museums bring Klonk’s history up to the present. But she believes, rightly I think, that such developments ‘represented no deviation from entrenched modes of viewing, no challenge to individual contemplation, and certainly no departure from the idea of the spectator as consumer’ made popular in mid-20th-century New York. Despite this, Klonk is not despondent; it is precisely by unearthing earlier models that emphasized the gallery as ‘a space of public interaction and communication’ that we may finally be able to reconstitute it as a space in which to explore ‘issues relating to human social interaction’. Spaces of Experience is a useful first step in this recovery effort.
Alternative Art and Anthropology: Global Encounters edited by Arnd Schneider, ‘Ethnography, ‘pataphysics, copying’ by X. Andrade pp. 189-208
The MoMA exhibition “takes us backwards through time to our origins. It moved from a specific point in historical time, the early 20th century, into the realm of pure form and spirit, and finally into the mythical realm of the purely authentic, where the sprit of the Primitive, rather than simply material objects, informs the creation of art” (Errington: 219).
The anthropology of art studies and analyses the wide range of material objects produced by people around the world. These are considered not merely as aesthetic objects but are understood to play a wider role in people's lives, for instance in their beliefs and rituals. The materials studied include sculpture, masks, paintings, textiles, baskets, pots, weapons, and the human body itself. Anthropologists are interested in the symbolic meanings encoded in such objects, as well as in the materials and techniques used to produce them.
The anthropology of art overlaps with art history, aesthetics, material culture studies, and visual anthropology. However, the anthropological approach to art is distinguished by its focus on the social processes involved in making objects. So, whereas art historians might be interested in the work and lives of named individuals, anthropologists of art are more concerned with the role and status of the artist in the wider community. Another central concern of this branch of the discipline has been to analyse the form and function of objects and to explore the relations between these and aspects of the wider society.
Since the 1960s in particular, anthropologists have produced increasingly sophisticated analyses of visual materials. More recently, closer attention has been paid to the different ideas of aesthetic value in different societies. Increasing attention has also been paid to the ways in which material objects made in one sphere come to have value in another. For example, there have been a number of recent studies of the tourist and art markets as well as of the role of museums.
In short, one solution to ethnocentrism in Art is cultural relativism, in that artifacts should be interpreted within their own cultural context. She argues that the lens through which Western art historians view the artifacts of non-Western cultures is incorrect, assuming that mimesis is the ultimate goal of all art. Rather, non-Western art should not be seen “non”-anything. In order to avoid the marginalization of art from Africa, Oceania, Asia and beyond, one must not seek to categorize based on Western notions of Art, but rather to seek the beauty and the purpose of art in each individual culture.