The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art

'Art historians, traditionally, have implicitly accepted the autonomy of the artwork and ignored what Mary Anne Staniszewski calls "the power of display." In this groundbreaking examination of installation design as an aesthetic medium and cultural practice, Staniszewski offers the first history of exhibitions at the most powerful and influential modern art museum--The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Focusing on over two hundred photographs of the visually rich but overlooked history of exhibitions, Staniszewski documents and deciphers an essential chapter of twentieth-century art and culture and provides a historical and theoretical framework for a primary area of contemporary aesthetic practice--installation-based art.Staniszewski treats installations as creations that manifest values, ideologies, politics, and of course aesthetics. Incorporating analysis of display techniques used in department stores, natural history museums, non-Western art galleries, and the international avant-gardes' exhibitions of the first half of the century, she makes visible both the explicit and covert meanings found in exhibitions. Some of the questions she addresses are: What sorts of viewers do different types of installations "create"? How do exhibition designs affect the meanings and receptions of specific objects, images, artifacts, and buildings when they are displayed? How do installations shape the viewer's experience of the cultural ritual of a museum visit? How does an amnesia regarding exhibition design affect art history, the art world, and collective cultural memories?Among the artists, designers, architects, and curators whose installations the author features are Dennis Adams, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Herbert Bayer, RenÃ© d'Harnoncourt, Ray and Charles Eames, Hans Haacke, David Hammons, Philip Johnson, Frederick Kiesler, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, El Lissitzky, Adrian Piper, Lilly Reich, William Rubin, Paul Rudolph, Edward Steichen, Giuseppe Terragni, and Kirk Varnedoe.' - from publisher's website.

Bibliography included.

Access level

Onsite

author

Mary Anne STANISZEWSKI

publisher

The MIT Press (Cambridge, United States)

Location code

REF.STM4

Language

English

Keyword

museum studies, curatorial practice

Publication/Creation date

2001

No of pages

408

ISBN / ISSN

9780262692724

No of copies

Content type

monograph

Chapter headings

Introduction - Installation Dedsign: The 'Unconscious' of Art Exhibitions

Framing Installation Design: The International Avant-Gardes

Aestheticized Installations for Modernism, Ethnographic Art, and Objects of Everyday Life

Installations for Good Design and Good Taste

Installations for Political Persuasion

Installation Design and Installation Art

Conclusion: The Museum and the Power of Memory

The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art

Citation

Rights statement

In Copyright

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This item is covered by one or more copyrights. It is available for research only or use within Hong Kong’s fair dealing rules. Please do not copy, re-use or reproduce this item without the permission of the copyright holder.

Tag

Exhibition Histories

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