Who really benefits from museums? Is the question posed by Tony Bennett in his ‘Exhibitionary Complex” 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’s knowledge, while displaying the state’s power.
“Institutions 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.”
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’s 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?
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.
Is it problematic for curators to display art in a way that may limit the viewers’ own interpretation? 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’s 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’s word as law because they have the power to further expand, dispute, or qualify the ideas presented to them in the museum.
It’s interesting that you say viewers in this digital age, have more power than the curator “to further expand, dispute or qualify the ideas presented to them in the museum.” During the class discussions, a lot of people said that the curator has power over the viewers because he or she decides what they see. But I think you’re right. Living in a day and age where we have instant access to limitless information, we have the choice and the necessary tools to form our own opinions about the objects and ideas presented to us by curators in museums. I guess the question I have is, does technology diminish or even trivialize the expertise of a curator? We have the option to pick and choose the artworks we want to see from our own bedroom. So why do we even bother to go to museums to see curated collections? I think it’s ironic that in today’s society, there is a greater push for democracy, but as museum goers, many of us still don’t necessarily dislike the idea of an expert choosing what we see. Seeing that museums are alive and well, there must be some value to seeing something that another person has picked and chosen for us, right? Even though we have access to information, the level of understanding that we obtain through independent research is not as profound as the insight curators have of the objects displayed. Therefore, adding on to what you said, I think cursory research of our own can supplement the ideas presented to us in museums, but they cannot replace them.
I agree that in this digital age where technology has completely permeated the very fabrics of our lives, the audience holds more power than the curator. The curatorial decisions may have limited the ways the objects are displayed, but they do not necessarily hinder the audience’s connection and interpretation of the art piece due to the enormous amount of information that can be accessed through technology. We are only prey to museum curators when we passively digest their intentions without critically thinking about the reasons behind their decisions or actively searching for more information. Now that technology has made information easily accessible to society, the museum is not so much about who controls knowledge and power but about how both the curators and the viewers can have a more diverse and rewarding experience with the objects.
That is interesting you found the Fowler’s collection “dumbed down”. My experience from the fowler museum is wanting to present these works not just in their present life as aesthetic museum objects but also give context for their previous life and utility outside of the museum.I feel that museums today or in “the digital age” especially contemporary art museums only speak to the “enlightened” audience but the fowler does a good job of speaking to everyone.
I found your ideas on the curation of the Fowler interesting and I have experienced some exhibitions that would reflect your point. I want to push back on your idea that the audience has more power and can learn more than the curator. Especially when it comes to the arts of Africa, the curators of these exhibits often have access to a lot more information than what the internet can perform. Many have done research or have access to those who have done research in the fields themselves.
Hey! I didn’t mean to demonize museum curators, of course they’re extremely knowledgable. I really just meant that viewers have the opportunity to expand on what is being presented in the exhibit using outside tools, because the presentation simply highlights facts that one person deemed as the most important pieces of information.
I felt that this post was very interesting because it posed an opposing point of view to my own. I believe that museums that aim to generalize and oversimplify cultures can be extremely problematic. I think that the interpretation given can be valid when it is explicitly stated in the museum. Overall i enjoyed being able to understand an alternate point of view in the argument.
Your post really challenged my own thoughts which I really liked. I personally believe that captions and backgrounds to these cultures and pieces actually do not encapsulate the culture as itself and sometimes detracts from the culture as a whole because they generalize it. It was interesting to read your viewpoint and broadened my thinking towards museums and their captions. I will keep this in mind next time I visit a museum and pay more attention to this.