What are Exhibitions for? An Anthropological Approach

Inge Daniels

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781350065376
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Museum Studies

Why do people go to exhibitions, and what do they hope to gain from the experience? What would happen if people were 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 exhibition-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 not only sheds light on what exhibitions are, but also what they could become in the future. Featuring over 175 colour illustrations and using practical examples, this is an important contribution for students and scholars of anthropology, museum studies, photography, design and architecture.

Chapter 1

Representational and Performative Knowledge

‘Only Thatcher entered with her shoes on’

Introduction: Space, haptic contact and embodied knowing

The feeling of home is not represented by slippers but performed by them.

HETHERINGTON 2003: 1939

The mundane arrangement of outdoor shoes left behind and homely slippers ready to be stepped into, depicted in the photograph above, can be found in entrance halls all over Japan. In my view, it is this everyday act of removing shoes before stepping up into the house that best encapsulates what it means to ‘feel’ at home in this cultural context (Daniels 2008, 2010, 2015). Indeed, the main aim of the At Home in Japan exhibition was to (re)create and evoke this sense of place, this feeling of home and belonging. Hetherington’s quote above about slippers is poignant in this context because it forms part of a larger discussion about the difference between ‘distal’ and ‘proximal’ knowledge, in which he argues that (moving) bodies do not experience place ‘as representation but as contact’. In his view, in the West seeing tends to be linked with knowing which ‘implies a broad, detached understanding based on knowledge at a distance or on a concern for the big picture’. By contrast, ‘proximal knowledge does not see the object as a totality . . . but it blurs boundaries between the body and the object’ (Hetherington 2003: 1933).

The complex synaesthetic choreography involved in removing shoes and stepping up into the Japanese home is an example of embodied knowledge, described by Hetherington, that is all too often ignored in contemporary museums. These institutions, that are products of enlightenment thinking, tend to favour ‘the distant, objectifying gaze of modern occularcentrism’ (Meyer and Verrips 2008: 714–75). This most clearly manifests itself in the ubiquity of the ‘do-not-touch’ policy, in turn linked with the drive to collect, preserve and venerate authentic iconic objects. However, what would an exhibition that takes space, contact and the blurring of subject and object as its starting point look like? Would this need to be an environment that prioritizes touch (or any of the other senses for that matter) at the expense of vision?

Hetherington is keen to steer away from associating different senses with different types of knowledge, and repeatedly stresses that sight can also be proximal, for example, when gazing intensively at something or glimpsing out of the corner of one’s eyes. Other researchers, especially those working within religious contexts, have similarly drawn attention to the ‘haptic gaze’.²³ A well-known example is given by the anthropologist Chris Pinney who has written widely about darshan – the tactile, intimate reciprocity of vision between the deity and the Hindu worshipper – in which the eye is understood to be ‘an organ of tactility . . . that connects with others’ (Pinney 2004: 193). Pinney further argues that this Indian understanding of visuality resonates with the universal practice of ‘corporetics’²⁴ or ‘sensory corporeal aesthetics’ which is a more complex concept than ‘aesthetics’ because it is expressed through ‘gestures and other phenomenological traces’ and doesn’t allow for ‘easy linguistic extraction’ (ibid., 200). Pinney’s thinking has been strongly influenced by Taussig’s rereading of Benjamin’s notion of ‘optical unconscious’, which he defines as ‘a visceral domain in which objects become sensorily emboldened in a magic technology of embodied knowing’ (ibid., 193). Interestingly for our discussion, in the same publication Taussig also explores the relationship between vision and embodied knowing in relation to space. In his words:

How do we get to know the rooms and hallways of a building? What sort of knowing is this? Is it primarily visual? What sort of vision? Surely not an abstract blueprint of the sort the architect drew? . . . [Do] touch and three-dimensional space make the eyeball an extension of the moving, sensate body?

TAUSSIG 1993: 26²⁵

Drawing on these ideas, we aimed to transcend sensory bias and create a multisensory, immersive space that did not deny visitors any kind of ‘haptic contact’. In the first meeting with in-house staff at the Geffrye Museum in the spring of 2010, I explained that in Japan feeling at home is intrinsically linked with shoe removal, and that we would therefore like to instruct visitors to exchange their shoes for slippers. However, at the start of 2011, less than three months before the opening, Sue and I were informed that it ‘had been decided’ (in an internal meeting) that we could not ask people to remove their shoes. The exact reason(s) for this decision remain obscure, but the following two concerns were voiced: firstly, large numbers of people bending down to take off their shoes might lead to overcrowding, and, secondly, shoes left behind in the entrance hall risked being stolen.²⁶

Theft was an issue that regularly surfaced during our preparatory discussions. I wasn’t particularly concerned because I felt that we had enough stock to replace any stolen items. However, the staff’s apprehension should of course be seen in the light of their preoccupation with the safety of objects in their permanent galleries, where visitors are physically separated from the displays through red ropes hung in front of period rooms but also standard glass vitrines in which valuable objects are placed. In a recent edited volume about the ‘inbetweenness of things’ (Basu 2017), Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll argues that these ‘parergonic’ devices produce specific contexts for engagement that impact on our perception and understanding of exhibitions (von Zinnenburg Carroll 2017: 23–24). Through a historical examination of glass display cases, she shows that, since their introduction in the sixteenth-century European Wunderkammer, they have served to stress the extraordinariness of objects by separating them from specific lived worlds. Over time, this has resulted in what she calls Vitrinendenken or ‘thinking through vitrines’, whereby ‘glass walls . . . the most insidious kind of alienation: transparent but impenetrable’ create the ‘illusion of universalism and cosmopolitanism’ (ibid., 34).

The fact that these security measures as well as patrolling guards and CCTV did not prevent some objects from disappearing, only strengthened Geffrye Museum staff in their belief that preventative actions against thievery such as gluing tableware to surfaces were necessary. Such a reaction resonates with Candlin’s assertion that ‘throughout the history of museums, the general public has been characterized . . . as a threat to both the preservation of objects and to other visitors’ proper enjoyment of the collections’ (Candlin 2007: 97). The curators we worked with seemed convinced that if visitors were given free access, (at least some) people would inevitably behave badly. Of course, potential damage or theft is not necessarily the only reason behind the standard do-no-touch policy. As Pye, for example, has shown, museum professionals might also be eager to protect their ‘privilege of touch’ from which they draw their authority and status (Pye 2007: 19).

The anxiety about theft in AHJ proved unfounded. The only objects that disappeared in large numbers over the six-month period were toothpicks. These most unexpected of desirable objects were kept in a cowboy-boot-shaped holder on the dining table. The fact that the ‘thieves’ chose one of the smallest and least valuable items of material culture on display suggests that the toothpicks were probably taken as mementoes or ‘trophy-objects’, possibly by daring children or teenagers. I regularly refilled the toothpick boot and in July, just as stock was running low, the Kagemoris, the only Japanese participants in my research who visited the exhibition, brought several packets of toothpicks with them from Osaka. Another rather insignificant object that went missing was a small mirror attached with Velcro to the inside of a handbag that we placed in one of the drawers in the ‘kimono closet’ in the Western-style room. None of the more expensive pieces of tableware in the dining-kitchen area were stolen, but a small decorative shell, part of a pair used during the Doll Festival in March, that was kept in one of the kitchen drawers, ‘went missing’.

Finally, parts of a miniature samurai helmet (kabuto) display, placed on a sideboard in the Japanese-style room to celebrate Children’s Day on 5 May also disappeared. Again, the items in question were two tiny pieces of gilded plastic used as antlers, with no particular monetary value. However, this discovery was more tragic because the helmet-display had been a special donation from an acquaintance in Osaka, and because without the antlers the impact of the display was greatly reduced and it could no longer be used in a possible future exhibition. We decided to enter it in the raffle and it thus ended up on a display shelf in Jen’s bedroom in Leicester, a space that will be discussed in Spread 4 in Chapter 3.

On many occasions I wrongly assumed that something had been taken only to find it had been left in a different location. The migratory patterns of the towels (tenugui), which we hung from drying racks in the bathroom, were particularly fascinating; some ended up on the free-standing drying rack in the Japanese-style room, others inside the ‘kimono closet’ in the Western-style room, and still others on the kitchen counter. Some of the photo albums were also moved from the living area to the Japanese-style room, and a small recipe book placed on the kitchen counter repeatedly ended up on the coffee table, suggesting that visitors moved these items to have a closer look while sitting on the sofa or on the tatami mats.

The fear of theft and museum security was also one of the key themes explored in Exhibition-ism: Museums and African Art held at the Museum for African Art in New York in 1994 (Roberts and Vogel 1994). This seminal exhibition, curated by Susan Vogel and Mary Roberts and designed by Chris Muller, critically examined the process of producing and conceiving of an exhibition. Topics explored ranged from exhibition design and health and safety issues to curatorial authority and the politics of display.²⁷ In one section of this show, visitors were confronted with ‘a disquieting display of the symbols of curatorial authority and lack of trust . . . [for example] a sculpture in a Plexiglas case, behind a velvet-rope stanchion, a guard standing beside [it], the whole scene swept by surveillance video camera’ (Roberts and Vogel 1994: 15). In At Home in Japan, we were able to release objects from these ‘layers of barriers’ (ibid., 15) or at least from the glass vitrines and the velvet ropes. A CCTV camera was in operation in the Western-style room, but it was not very visible and footage was rarely checked. A guard also patrolled the exhibition, but this person was generally preoccupied with checking whether visitors were wearing a red sticker, thereby proving that they had paid the entrance fee.

Returning to shoe theft; in my view, the problems envisioned could have been easily addressed by providing the visitors with plastic bags to carry their own shoes around the exhibition. This same approach has been tried and tested at temples throughout Japan where visitors are obliged to remove their shoes upon entering. The method has also been successfully used in the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka for the 2002 Seoul Style exhibition that allowed visitors to freely wander around in a reconstructed Korean flat (see Chapter 2). The fact that the Geffrye is a historical museum might of course be another reason why staff were reluctant to introduce these Japanese practices. In order to prevent bottlenecks in the entrance hall, we could also have made the space bigger than usual and place a large bench inside for people to sit on and take off their shoes. By including this piece of furniture, we could have also addressed the fact that elderly people might find it difficult to bend over to take off their shoes. For the same reason, benches have become popular in the entrance halls of a growing number of Japanese homes. A series depicting the initial layout plans of the flat and the changes that were implemented as our preparations for the exhibition progressed is shown on the next two pages; a bench has been added to the entrance hall in layout plan 3.

In the end, visitors were only casually ‘informed’ through a small text on a panel in the entrance hall that read, ‘In Japan people do not wear shoes inside their homes’. Whether or not visitors read this message, the life-size copy of a photograph depicting a threshold with slippers placed on the inside and shoes on the outside – that we pasted on the floor and placed real slippers and shoes on – s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: What are Exhibitions for?
• 1. Representational and Performative Knowledge
• 2. Photography, Exhibition Design and Atmosphere
• 3. Similarities and Stereotypes
• 4. To Learn or not to Learn?
• 5. Photography, Performance and Play
• Conclusion: Exhibitions as Technologies of the Imagination
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Acknowledgements
• eCopyright