Response: The White Cube and Beyond
[A response to Niklas Maak, Charlotte Klonk, Thomas Demand, 'The White Cube and Beyond' in Tate Etc., 21 (Spring 2011), 78-91.]
As I said in 15 April's short post concerning the difficulty of defining the museum, the article in this season's Tate Etc. cited above, on the development of the use of museum space, is a great starting-point for someone like me, coming from an informal and more, say, empirical museological background. Perhaps in the end this will read more like a review than a response, or a mixture of the two, so forgive me the terminological inconsistency if this turns out to be the case.
Museums are clearly not inert buildings but spaces of experience. Their role as repositories for objects may be an essential one in their broader definition, but it's feasible that an impermanent, even open-air space could be described as a museum, albeit probably be limited in use to temporary and weather-resistant exhibitions.
However, their received role as "guardians" of artifacts is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain as collections expand and storage basements become full. A continuous antagonism exists between the displaying-museum (its permanent collections on show) and the archive-museum (its permanent collections in storage), negotiated trepidatiously by curators who must decide how to make sense of them in line with current expectations and future theorisations about museum practice and function. Thus, museums are not just buildings for objects that already exist, both because, in the case of galleries particularly, artworks may be created specifically for their spaces, and, more generally, because as a species our capacity for producing museum-worthy material is unending.
Exhibitions have changed to such an extent that rooms also have to change, meaning that there is a fusion of production and display. In line with this, curators of contemporary art began to withdraw from the exhibition room and now often artists are in charge. Moreover, whereas in the past "[c]urators guided the viewing process in a sensory way through the decoration of the gallery rooms", today they provide, more than the physical context, an experience that is "problem-orientated". Ultimately, then, the guidelines for museum architects and curators, importantly, are clearly about creating "unarticulated, flexible and adaptable exhibition spaces" (quotations from pages 82-4). This is especially apparent in the fourth-floor special exhibitions spaces at Tate Modern, where with each show the space is structurally redesigned to accommodate the curators' needs and intentions. This idea is particularly important to consider, especially since museums may be seen by some as "publicly recognised quotation marks" (90) for the displaying of objects or activities that are "exemplary": at the moment (and it should continue to be this way), curators strive to create dynamic spaces that request the visitor's participation more than demand her presence.
Curators must ask how their roles help visitors to cultivate relations with objects and among themselves, a concern since the end of the eighteenth century according to Klonk, when the museum came to be perceived as an alternative space to the park (78). Because of work in cognitive psychology, the first director of the National Gallery, Charles Eastlake, hung paintings at eye level and decorated the walls in red. Back then the museum was not the space of silent devotion it often is today, but a more sensual experience. This point is particularly noteworthy for the way it explicitly calls attention to the changing effects of space. Museums can still typically be perceived as 'gentrified' or 'sanctified', which the article informs us is an attitude with later origins, when grand entrance halls and exhibition rooms were specially designed for purpose. Later still, considerations of hygiene and the discussion of white as a colour suggesting infinite space from around the end of the nineteenth century up to the 1920s, were all part of the trajectory towards the universal use of white, beginning in the 1930s in Germany and in England and France after the Second World War. The authors see today's 'White Cube' as a logical progression (80). The obvious benefits of neutrality are evident in the use of white for gallery walls, but of course it is not the exclusive choice, as the Tate's Miró exhibition demonstrates in its adoption of subtle shades of grey for certain rooms. But the use of colour, for Klonk, must be "honest, so there is no patronising": colours that change in such a way that it is not obvious subliminally creates different atmospheres, and even if visitors do notice what's happening, they don't know why, which is "manipulative" (85). Tacitly, then, the article makes reference to the ethical responsibility of the curator, which is an interesting consideration.
Curation is an intrinsically problematic project, especially with reference to a contemporary trend for objects in different media, making the field of interest more complex. Consequently, curators have a hard job showing us objects that we would not otherwise see. Couple this with the temporary nature of exhibiting, and the task becomes trickier still, because certain things must be marked and noticed - curators and critics have specific needs when it comes to displaying artifacts to make the experience worthwhile from the perspectives of instruction and enjoyment. Still, the article would suggest that the debate is an active one, with a broad range of participation, that could result in exciting opportunities for all users of museums. The original museion was a quarter with many buildings to honour the muses, the ideal counter-image of the actual city; so "[m]aybe we need to move away from the notion of the museum as a temple of sacral, passive, exclusively contemplative viewing of art, which, of course, should continue to exist, and towards a counter-city as a public space, an open stage on which certain encounters and experiences can take place" (91).
As I said in 15 April's short post concerning the difficulty of defining the museum, the article in this season's Tate Etc. cited above, on the development of the use of museum space, is a great starting-point for someone like me, coming from an informal and more, say, empirical museological background. Perhaps in the end this will read more like a review than a response, or a mixture of the two, so forgive me the terminological inconsistency if this turns out to be the case.
Museums are clearly not inert buildings but spaces of experience. Their role as repositories for objects may be an essential one in their broader definition, but it's feasible that an impermanent, even open-air space could be described as a museum, albeit probably be limited in use to temporary and weather-resistant exhibitions.
However, their received role as "guardians" of artifacts is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain as collections expand and storage basements become full. A continuous antagonism exists between the displaying-museum (its permanent collections on show) and the archive-museum (its permanent collections in storage), negotiated trepidatiously by curators who must decide how to make sense of them in line with current expectations and future theorisations about museum practice and function. Thus, museums are not just buildings for objects that already exist, both because, in the case of galleries particularly, artworks may be created specifically for their spaces, and, more generally, because as a species our capacity for producing museum-worthy material is unending.
Exhibitions have changed to such an extent that rooms also have to change, meaning that there is a fusion of production and display. In line with this, curators of contemporary art began to withdraw from the exhibition room and now often artists are in charge. Moreover, whereas in the past "[c]urators guided the viewing process in a sensory way through the decoration of the gallery rooms", today they provide, more than the physical context, an experience that is "problem-orientated". Ultimately, then, the guidelines for museum architects and curators, importantly, are clearly about creating "unarticulated, flexible and adaptable exhibition spaces" (quotations from pages 82-4). This is especially apparent in the fourth-floor special exhibitions spaces at Tate Modern, where with each show the space is structurally redesigned to accommodate the curators' needs and intentions. This idea is particularly important to consider, especially since museums may be seen by some as "publicly recognised quotation marks" (90) for the displaying of objects or activities that are "exemplary": at the moment (and it should continue to be this way), curators strive to create dynamic spaces that request the visitor's participation more than demand her presence.
Curators must ask how their roles help visitors to cultivate relations with objects and among themselves, a concern since the end of the eighteenth century according to Klonk, when the museum came to be perceived as an alternative space to the park (78). Because of work in cognitive psychology, the first director of the National Gallery, Charles Eastlake, hung paintings at eye level and decorated the walls in red. Back then the museum was not the space of silent devotion it often is today, but a more sensual experience. This point is particularly noteworthy for the way it explicitly calls attention to the changing effects of space. Museums can still typically be perceived as 'gentrified' or 'sanctified', which the article informs us is an attitude with later origins, when grand entrance halls and exhibition rooms were specially designed for purpose. Later still, considerations of hygiene and the discussion of white as a colour suggesting infinite space from around the end of the nineteenth century up to the 1920s, were all part of the trajectory towards the universal use of white, beginning in the 1930s in Germany and in England and France after the Second World War. The authors see today's 'White Cube' as a logical progression (80). The obvious benefits of neutrality are evident in the use of white for gallery walls, but of course it is not the exclusive choice, as the Tate's Miró exhibition demonstrates in its adoption of subtle shades of grey for certain rooms. But the use of colour, for Klonk, must be "honest, so there is no patronising": colours that change in such a way that it is not obvious subliminally creates different atmospheres, and even if visitors do notice what's happening, they don't know why, which is "manipulative" (85). Tacitly, then, the article makes reference to the ethical responsibility of the curator, which is an interesting consideration.
Curation is an intrinsically problematic project, especially with reference to a contemporary trend for objects in different media, making the field of interest more complex. Consequently, curators have a hard job showing us objects that we would not otherwise see. Couple this with the temporary nature of exhibiting, and the task becomes trickier still, because certain things must be marked and noticed - curators and critics have specific needs when it comes to displaying artifacts to make the experience worthwhile from the perspectives of instruction and enjoyment. Still, the article would suggest that the debate is an active one, with a broad range of participation, that could result in exciting opportunities for all users of museums. The original museion was a quarter with many buildings to honour the muses, the ideal counter-image of the actual city; so "[m]aybe we need to move away from the notion of the museum as a temple of sacral, passive, exclusively contemplative viewing of art, which, of course, should continue to exist, and towards a counter-city as a public space, an open stage on which certain encounters and experiences can take place" (91).
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