What are Exhibitions for?: An Anthropological Approach

✍ Scribed by Inge Daniels

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 249
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Why do people go to exhibitions, and what do they hope to gain from the experience? What would happen if people are encouraged to move freely through exhibition spaces, take photographs and be playful?
In this book, Inge Daniels explores what might happen if people and objects were freed from the regulations currently associated with going to an exhibition. Traditional understandings of exhibitions place the viewers in a one-way communication form, where the exhibition and those behind its creation inform their audiences. However, motivations behind exhibitions going are multiple and complex and frequently the intentions of curators do not match the expectations of their visitors.
Based on an in-depth ethnographic examination of the processes involved in the making and reception of one particular exhibition experiment as well as a study that follows ‘freed’ objects into their new homes, this publication will shed light on what exhibitions are but also what they could become in the future.
Featuring over 175 colour illustrations and using practical examples, this will be essential reading for students and scholars of anthropology, museum studies, photography, design and architecture.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover page
Halftitle page
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Epigraph
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction What are Exhibitions for?
The experiment: At Home in Japan in London
An ethnography of exhibition visitors
Back to freedom: Object journeys beyond the museum
Exhibitions: An anthropological approach
A practical tool to study exhibition visitors
Chapter 1 Representational and Performative Knowledge
Introduction: Space, haptic contact and embodied knowing
‘I suppose we should take off our shoes here’
‘Only Thatcher entered with her shoes on’
Discussion: ‘Please touch the items in this exhibition’
‘There is a connecting memory in my feet’
Chapter 2 Photography, Exhibition Design and Atmosphere
Introduction: ‘Life-size photos set the scene’
Photography, domestic space and immersive exhibitions
Surface textures and spatial dynamics: ‘At first glance I thought that there was a real toilet’
‘A lively interplay between the two-and the three-dimensional’
Discussion: ‘I actually felt like I was in a Japanese fi lm’
‘Photography students have been very surprised to learn that what appears to be an actual window is in fact an illusion’
Chapter 3 Similarities and Stereotypes
Introduction: ‘When the stereotype disintegrates, the human being emerges’
Japan-lovers: ‘It would have been good to have an actual bath’
Cultural brokers: ‘They are able to squat a lot lower than I can’
Japanese visitors: ‘These are really common’
Discussion: ‘The Japan of the little tradition’
‘I was very interested in anime and manga’
Chapter 4 To Learn or not to Learn?
Introduction: ‘IKEA furniture didn’t convey Japanese aesthetics very well’
Objects are ‘the stars of the show’?
‘I liked making discoveries for myself’
‘Mom, I am rocking these shoes!’
Discussion: ‘It’s written for a club of people, but not really for me’
‘And I have been putting them in the dishwasher!’
‘It is in our showerbecause it is very useful’
‘It is something I found and can’t give away’
Chapter 5 Photography, Performance and Play
Introduction: ‘A feeling of being there?’
‘Dressing up is controversial’
‘It was a big surprise to see that people were so interested’
‘I was surprised to find this box of cockroach poison’
Discussion: ‘Be part of art!’
‘I never found England a very interesting place’
Conclusion Exhibitions as Technologies of the Imagination
Notes
References
Index