• A KURÁTORI GYAKORLAT ÉS DISZKURZUS SZÓTÁRA
  • Bemutatási mód
  • Diszkurzivitás
  • Együttműködésen alapuló művészeti gyakorlatok
  • Fehér kocka
  • Finanszírozás
  • Interpretáció
  • Kiállított kultúrák
  • Kurátori (szemlélet)
  • Oktatási fordulat
  • Performatív kurátori gyakorlatok
  • Részvételen alapuló művészeti gyakorlatok
  • Szerzőség
  • Új muzeológia

• Esettanulmányok

• Kiállítás (Budapest)

• Megjelenések

• Rólunk

• CURATORIAL DICTIONARY
  • Exhibition display
  • Discursivity
  • Collaboration
  • White cube
  • Funding
  • Interpretation
  • Exhibiting cultures
  • Curatorial
  • Educational turn
  • Performativity
  • Participation
  • Authorship
  • New museology

• Case Studies

• An Exhibition (Budapest)

• Appearances

• About

EXHIBITING CULTURES


The notion of exhibiting cultures  is related to cultural representation in cultural anthropology and ethnography, as well as to the interpretive (~interpretation) turn of anthropology. The term appeared in the 1990s as the new, analytical concept of critical museum studies. [1] Exhibiting cultures means, on the one hand, a critical attitude towards exhibition practices; on the other hand, it refers to the analytical and authorial understanding of these practices (~authorship). Subsequently, an exhibition is a complex work that can be read as a text; it is a layered spatial and visual system with significations. The exhibition is also a work that is both the object and the subject of museological research and museum studies (that is, theory, methodology, and practice). The reflexive thinking behind exhibiting cultures was not exceptional, nor was it a fundamental novelty in the 1990s, both in the contexts of museums of socio-anthropology and museums of art (~exhibition display ~white cube ~interpretation ~new museology). Rather, this term can be thought of as a differentiation of concepts within museum studies, which, due to its multidisciplinary characteristics, allowed for new aspects of analysis. Anglo-Saxon museum studies condensed this critical and authorial attitude in the concept of exhibiting cultures.

For the emergence of exhibiting cultures, one has to also consider the conceptual and/or appropriation-based, critical (often radical) art practices in the 1960s, targeting the institutions of museums and galleries [2] (~exhibition display ~white cube). In cultural anthropology and ethnography the role and the position of the author (who writes analytical essays, makes exhibitions) likewise changed in the 1970s. Concurrently, the certainties with regards to genres also started to dissipate; [3] concepts were realigned, new scientific paradigms were built besides previous approaches. It was within this transformation that critique, reflection, and “turn” (Wende) paved their way, which primarily placed the role of interpretation and representation at the center of attention and the critique of cultural studies (~interpretation).

Exhibiting cultures refers primarily in the case of museums and gallery spaces to the spatial transformation of display (spatial turn) (~exhibition display) as well as to visual methodologies (visual display). However, on the level of practice, it signifies the new praxis and viewpoint of exhibition-making—which is pronouncedly more than mere visuality. This transition, thus, cannot be identified solely as the processes pertaining to the physical site of exhibition spaces. Just as in the case of texts, the linguistic turn does not mean only a rhetorical change; instead, it denotes a new way and discourse of critical thinking. It is, however, discernable that for both visitors and for experts the alterations of exhibition culture is most easily identified in formal changes.  It is clear that exhibition-making as a deliberate editorial gesture (which can be made visible) does not only modify the physical space of the exhibition, but also the correlated signal system of exhibitions, exhibition-making, and museological knowledge. It, thus, shapes institutional praxis in its entirety (~new museology). 

Research tendencies that likewise affect all parts of the museum are also connected to exhibiting cultures: this concerns the critical analysis of collections, the rearrangement of permanent exhibitions, or formulating the issues of critical cultural studies within the museum/exhibition space. Yet, in all cases, this is made with the acknowledgment of the authorial/editorial/curatorial position and influence. (~interpretation ~exhibition display ~authorship). Exhibiting culture, thus, refers to the deployment of such text-like methodological strategies in the museum/exhibition, which have substantially shaped in the last 20 or 30 years the discourses of art and cultural studies outside the museum.

Exhibiting cultures, nonetheless, is not only the above-mentioned components, one by one, and it is not their sum, either. Rather, this interpretive concept signifies a debate in cultural studies/anthropology/literature: the “creation” of cultural otherness through writing (writing culture), [4] the crisis of cultural representation, and a critical and self-reflexive scientific response to this crisis. [5] These conceptual changes took place, for the most part, within writing in the field of anthropology and cultural studies [6]; whereas, in the case of museums with collections or galleries without collections, these alterations occurred mostly in the exhibition’s narrative structure, translated to the space and to a visual language.

In the case of art museums, art practices of institutional critique profoundly affected this shift. With socio-anthropological museums, the role of the curator as researcher—and a producer who creates meaning—is foregrounded.  (~authorship, ~interpretation ~curatorial). Consequently, museums of socio-anthropology and art began to integrate the concerns of these methodological changes into their exhibition praxes, with the discursive presentation of creators, authors, and concepts, through which these became apparent visually (~exhibition display ~discursivity). Hence, the museum is no longer only the place of grand narratives, but also the subjective site of questions, doubts, and alternative understandings, which allow for new and more democratic practices to emerge. (~discursivity ~participation ~collaboration).

Concomitantly, (and perhaps also as a result), museums and exhibitions became—beyond praxis (the theory, methodology, and practice of science)—the object and subject of critical analysis. Through these inquiries, exhibiting cultures integrated into the theoretical field of social and cultural studies, as well as to artistic and curatorial approach. 

 

Zsófia Frazon 

 

References and Further Readings 

Bachmann-Medick, Doris
1992 ’Writing Culture’ – ein diskurs zwischen Ethnologie und Literaturwissenschaft. Kea. Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaft, 4/1992, 1-20

Bachmann-Medick, Doris. Hrsg.
1997 Übersetzung als Repräsentation fremder Kulturen. Berlin, Schmidt Verlag
1998 Kultur als Text. Die anthropologische Wende in der Literaturwissenschaft. Frankfurt am Main, Fischer

Bouquet, Mary
1999 Academic Anthropology and the Museum: Back to the Future. An Introduction. Focaal,34/1999, 7-20.

Bouquet, Mary
2000 Thinking and Doing Otherwise: Anthropological Theory in Exhibitionary Practice. Ethnos, 2/2000, 217-236.

Clifford, James – Marcus, George E. eds.
1986 Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berekley, Los Angeles, London, University of California Press

Fuchs, Martin – Berg, Eberhard
1993 Phänomenologie der Differenz. Reflexionsstufen etnographischer Repräsentation. In:Kultur, soziale Praxis, Text. Die Krise des etnographischen Repräsentation. Hrsg. Berg, Ebenhardt – Fuchs, Martin, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1993, 11-108.

Geertz, Clifford
1994 Az értelmezés hatalma. Antropológiai írások. Budapest, Századvég

Gottowik, Volker
1997 Konstruktionen des Anderen: Clifford Geertz und die Kriese der ethnographischen Repräsentation. Berlin, Reimer

Herzfeld, Michael
1983 Looking Both Ways: The Ethnographer in the Text. Semiotica, 46/1983, 2/4, 151-166.

James, Allison – Hockey, Jenny – Dawson, Andrew eds.
1997 After Writing Culture. Epistemology and Praxis in Contemporary Anthropology. London, New York, Routledge

Karp, Ivan – Lavine, Steven D. ed.
1991 Exhibiting Cultures. The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Washington, London, Smithsonian Institution Press

Lumley, Robert ed.
1988 The Museum Time-Machine. Putting Cultures on Display. London, New York, Routledge.

Macdonald, Sharon – Fyfe, Gordon eds.
1996 Theorizing Museums. Representing Identity and Diversity in a Changing World. Oxford, Blackwell Publishing

Mangano, Marc
1990 Textual Play, Power, and Cultural Critique: An Orientation to Modernist Anthropology. In:Modernist Anthropology. From Fieldwork to Text. szerk. Mangano, Marc, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 3-47.

Raunig, Gerald – Ray, Gene eds.
2009 Art and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional Critique. London, MayFlyBooks. mayflybooks.org. MayFly Books. Web. 2013. jún. 10. http://mayflybooks.org/?page_id=20

Shelton, Anthony
1999 Unsettling the Meaning: Critical Museology, Art, and Anthropologycal Discourse. Focaal,34/1994, 143-162.