On the Meaning of Exhibitions – Exhibition Epistèmes in a Historical Perspective

Abstract

Universe every single "thing", every phenomenon-be it material or immaterial-had its given place. Science-and scientists-had "only" to discover it all, reveal things and lay them bare. Discovery gained control over the discovered. Objects from newly discovered parts of the world where brought together as representations of the wonders created by God. In the Age of discoveries, objects were gathered and shown in collections of naturalia and artificicalia in the Cabinets of Curiosities or the 'Kunstkammern' of the time (Wagner 1994, p. 24). By showing and studying the material, you could-so they thought-also learn about its origins and contexts. This was the core idea with collections. This early development of museums was intimately associated with the development of the sciences and the arts, since many of the sixteenth and seventeenth century cabinets of Naturalia, Artificialia and Curiosities were assembled by scholars linked to libraries and universities and were used for research and educational purposes. These early cabinets and museumsthat is: exhibitions-were usually arranged according to rational, "prescientific" systems of comparison and resemblance: convenientia, analogia, sympathia, imitatio and aemulatio (Foucault 1991, p. 18-26). Thus objects which had the same colour or just resembled one another in form, were put together in a classification system-and consequently also in the display. At the end of the 17th century a collection on display was at times called An Allegory of the Sense of Sight. However, all these classificatory systems-even with Carl von Linné at the 18th century-were based on the firm belief that our world was created and ruled by God. Man's efforts of exploring, understanding and ordering were only due to "revealing" it all. Beginning with the early Modern era in the 17th century, science was a world of observation and experimentation. It was based on "a system of looks", based on the Cartesian principle of a subject-the observer-being separated from the object-the observed-that is, from nature and the material world. That which was observed, "objectively" and "neutrally", had then to be named, otherwise it could not be interpreted, nor controlled, nor classified or communicated. The separation between 'subject' and 'object' encompassed the problem of objectivity, of seeing and naming. What came first: the thing in itself, or the knowledge/idea of it? One of the philosophical conclutions was that the "thing" (object) doesn't actually exist without its name; the object, with all 51 52 its connotations to human life, was "born" only at the very moment we gave it a name and interpreted it's function. Another result of this process was that the physical "world" around us became separated from "us". Nature, or the "world", was going on out there, and reachable/understandable for us only by naming it in our language, with the aid of which it would be represented. The theory of analogies, resemblances and sympathies between things was gradually replaced by the theory of serial structures...

The Influence of Presentation Format on Responses of Male Sex Offenders to Digital Paintings that illustrate the Consequences Sexual Crimes

“…Wahab and Zuhardi (2013) define exhibitions as complex presentations that convey concepts, showcase objects, and excite the senses. Smeds (2012) on the other hand defines an exhibition as a spatially organized and visualized expression of thoughts, things and systems of knowledge, and to a large extent based on the display of material objects. Exhibitions today serve the goal of bringing art to a place of relevance that is relatable to a wide audience, by using varied strategies to connect and to touch audiences (Cline, 2012).…”

Metamorphosis of Value in the Battle Between Preservation and Allowing Decay

“…Classification, even for its master Carl von Linné, was a means of exclusion, not only inclusion. What was left out, which resisted integration or was impossible to fit into the system, drifted as a kind of rationality's leftovers on the backyards of civilization (Smeds 2012). The importance of museum collections for Western civilization and culture lies in the power of hiding away and forgetting, as much as in selecting and including and thus enforcing social identity work.…”

“…To classify is to create order out of chaos. Classification and categorization is an incessant human preoccupation that we are conducting almost every minute in our lives (Smeds, 2012). One could really say -we classify, therefore we are humans.…”