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Out of the Past: UAMA at Fifty
Anna Bonetti Ruins of Corinth, 1957
Out of the Past: UAMA at Fifty
employs the Museum's extraordinary collections to look back to an
earlier era, in celebration of a half-century of growth and change. The
presentation recreates the exhibition aesthetics of the Museum's early
years to underscore the role of design in framing our encounter with and
understanding of the visual arts. By reconstructing display conventions
that may seem quaint today, the exhibition provokes a collision between
past and present, offering visitors an opportunity to consider
installation design as a medium in its own right - one often
unacknowledged, but nonetheless caught in complex relation to history,
ideology, politics and taste.
Out of the Past makes explicit the many
decisions that comprise museum exhibition design. The most important
elements - wall color and texture, framing, labeling, scale, lighting,
and juxtaposition - act as unspoken language. In this case, the paneled
and brocaded background mounts, elaborate framing, low light levels, and
decorative floral accents explicitly refute Modernist installation
aesthetics and their articulation of art objects as "autonomous." By
eschewing the spare, "neutral" exhibition design that today prevails as
the "white-cube" convention, the domestic flair of early UAMA
exhibitions confirmed art as a vital sign of cultural sophistication; if
art ownership was the privilege of the few, then exhibitions such as
this one aimed to introduce a broader public to its elevating effects.
Similarly, the organization of works in coloristic relation, rather than
by chronology or intellectual affinity, favored the pleasures of taste
(of the curator and the presumed viewers) over other imperatives.
The decision to limit the presentation to decorative, mostly figurative
works of Continental origin re-articulates a historical preference for
the "high-brow" pedigree and posh interior design of the European
aristocracy and invites viewers to consider changes in "taste" over
time. To enhance the domestic ambience, works were often presented
without identification labels or contextual information. Interpretation,
now expected of museum educators and curators, was not in evidence as a
part of the exhibition itself. Rather, the exhibition acted as a
projection of cultural values; the intended experience was one of
civilizing enlightenment, rather than engaged edification.
While this exhibition is an amalgam of many early installations, it
relies heavily on the 1971 Kees van Dongen exhibition, designed by
then-director William Steadman, Jr. By 1971, such traditional
installation design was already retrospective of much earlier, more
conservative, anti-Modernist aesthetic interests; as such, it looked to
the past. Here, we hope to provide an opportunity not only to step back
into history but also to posit revision and reconsideration as essential
to any move forward into the future.
More than an elaborate storehouse or showplace, the museum is both a
repository for and producer of memory. While museum collecting endows
carefully selected objects with cultural value and historical meaning,
thereby generating memory at the public level, exhibitions offer
artfully designed experiences that enter memory in more personal terms.
Out of the Past invites viewers to question both public and private
expectations regarding the experience of viewing art in a museum setting
and to consider the ways in which museums construct meaning and memory
through encounters with art over time.
Also see the related exhibition, An
Abundant Legacy
Visit our Exhibition History page for information
on past exhibitions at UAMA.
UAMA: (520) 621-7567
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