Introductory description

This module will examine the role played by museums and exhibitions in the production of contemporary art and culture. We will study exhibition practices through the lens of both art and architecture. 'Exhibiting' refers to the spaces and narratives created by displays – from ethnographic collections and conceptual art to shifts in the public’s ways of seeing. Nation building and national rivalry, politics, ideology, and aesthetic revolutions weave throughout the history of exhibitions. Students will learn that the manner in which art is displayed is never neutral.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Introduction: A History of Showing Things
Modern Architecture and Display
Encountering Contemporary Art
Global Exhibitions and the Rise of the Curator
Margins and the Ethnographic Exhibition
The Heritage Industry and Cultural Regeneration
Gallery Ideology and Protesting the Exhibition

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate an understanding of the importance of exhibiting and exhibitions for the identity of contemporary art and architecture;
• Demonstrate an understanding of the historical and contemporary links between art and architecture
• Familiarity with a variety of practices and critical issues in contemporary art and architecture from the 1960s to the present.
• Present an argument, initiate and sustain group discussion through intelligent questioning and debate at an appropriate level
• Ability to undertake research and to write up the results in the form of a well-structured argument at an appropriate level
• Familiarity with essential ICT skills
• Ability to collaborate effectively with others
• Show understanding of diverse viewpoints
• Ability to find, select, organize and synthesize evidence
• Ability to formulate a sustained argument
• Think conceptually and independently at an appropriate level
• Employ sophisticated conceptual and visual analysis
• Demonstrate bibliographical skills at an appropriate level
• Produce critical analysis of cultural artefacts in their context

Indicative reading list

Carol Duncan, Civilizing Rituals: Inside the Public Art Museum (New York: Routledge, 1995).

Ivan Karp and Steven Lavine, ed., Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display (Washington: Smithsonian Press, 1991).

Charlotte Klonk, Spaces of Experience: Art Gallery Interiors from 1800 to 2000 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).

Miwon Kwon, One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002).

Sylvia Lavin, Kissing Architecture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).

Donald Preziosi, Brain of the Earth’s Body: Art, Museums, and the Phantasms of Modernity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003).

Brian O'Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (Culver City: The Lapis Press, 1986).

View reading list on Talis Aspire

International

This module is taught in Venice through class-based learning, site visits and trips.

Subject specific skills

• Demonstrate an understanding of the importance of exhibiting and exhibitions for the identity of contemporary art and architecture
• Demonstrate an understanding of the historical and contemporary links between art and architecture:
• Understand the architectural contexts of art, and the artistic contexts of architecture
• A familiarity with a variety of practices and critical issues in contemporary art and architecture from the 1960s to the present.
• Employ sophisticated conceptual and visual analysis
• Produce critical analysis of cultural artefacts in their context

Transferable skills

• present an argument, initiate and sustain group discussion through intelligent questioning and debate at an appropriate level
• ability to undertake research and to write up the results in the form of a well-structured argument at an appropriate level
• familiarity with essential ICT skills
• ability to collaborate effectively with others
• show understanding of diverse viewpoints
• ability to find, select, organize and synthesize evidence
• ability to formulate a sustained argument
• think conceptually and independently at an appropriate level
• Demonstrate bibliographical skills at an appropriate level