{"id":215,"date":"2016-01-12T12:11:13","date_gmt":"2016-01-12T20:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w16\/?p=215"},"modified":"2016-01-12T12:11:13","modified_gmt":"2016-01-12T20:11:13","slug":"exhibitionary-complex-what-can-the-viewer-do-to-expand-on-a-museums-presentation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w16\/2016\/01\/12\/exhibitionary-complex-what-can-the-viewer-do-to-expand-on-a-museums-presentation\/","title":{"rendered":"Exhibitionary Complex: What Can The Viewer Do To Expand On A Museum’s Presentation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who really benefits from museums? Is the question posed by Tony Bennett in his \u2018Exhibitionary Complex\u201d essay. In examining knowledge as a form of power, Bennett insinuates that audiences of public museums are prey to museum curators who regulate society. Making museums public is a method by the government for controlling society\u2019s knowledge, while displaying the state\u2019s power. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cInstitutions comprising ‘the exhibitionary complex’, by contrast, were involved in the transfer of objects and bodies from the enclosed and private domains in which they had previously been displayed (but to a restricted public) into progressively more open and public arenas where, through the representations to which they were subjected, they formed vehicles for inscribing and broadcasting the messages of power (but of a different type) throughout society.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This reminds me of my final paper for Art History 56B, Art of Africa, in Spring of 2014. In the assignment, the class was asked to visit the Fowler Museum\u2019s Afrian Art exhibit and examine the benefit of the exhibit. Did the exhibit properly convey the true artistic climate in various African countries? Was it misleading in any way to the viewer? How can an exhibit, curated by an American for an American audience, give true homage to the African origins of the objects within?<\/span><\/p>\n

After many hours of analysis, I answered the question by saying that the exhibit relied heavily on the assumption that the audience had no baseline knowledge of African Arts. Therefore, the exhibit became a dumbed down interpretation of the objects, which may lead to an overly simplified view of African art. <\/span><\/p>\n

Is it problematic for curators to display art in a way that may limit the viewers’ own interpretation?\u00a0 <\/span>No. Curators must seek to present information as simply as possible in order to cater to a varied audience. The enlightened audience has thousands of tools at their fingertips: libraries, internet resources, worldly friends, etc, to expand their learning if they so desire to research an exhibit further on their own time. At the time of Bennett\u2019s writing (1988) this was a less feasible option. But our class is called Museums in the Digital Age. In this world, the viewer has more power than the curator, jumping off from ideas presented in an exhibit as a baseline for research. Viewers do not take a curator\u2019s word as law because they have the power to further expand, dispute, or qualify the ideas presented to them in the museum. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who really benefits from museums? Is the question posed by Tony Bennett in his \u2018Exhibitionary Complex\u201d essay. In examining knowledge as a form of power, Bennett insinuates that audiences of … Continue reading “Exhibitionary Complex: What Can The Viewer Do To Expand On A Museum’s Presentation”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}