You, the Museum, and the Space Between: The Visitor's Subjective Experience and the
Disciplinary Effects of the Spatial Organisation at The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
MA Thesis Cultural Analysis Supervisor: Murat Aydemir Word Count: 18, 766 June, 2015
Table of Contents
Introduction
Setting The Scene / The Exterior
The Real Beginning / The Entrance Foyer Expressed Aims / Room 0.1
Concealed Function – Differentiation / Rooms 0.1 – 0.10 Concealed Function – Complicity / Room 0.9
A Short Interlude – A Note on the Escalator / Lower Level – Top Floor Signs – Objects – Distance / Rooms 1.26 – 1.28
Spectacle & The Spectator / Bathtub Window Epilogue
Introduction
The Stedelijk Museum, situated in Amsterdam's Museumplein, houses one of the largest collections of Modern and Contemporary Art in The Netherlands. Founded in 1874 as a donated private
collection and held within the Rijksmuseum, the collection was later transported to Adriaan Willem Weissman's specifically designed building for its permanent display. Since then the directorships of Willem Sandberg, 1945-62, and Ann Goldstein, 2010-13, have arguably been the most influential, in expanding the museum's collection, organising its display and shaping the identity of the
institution. Goldstein overlooked the public programme, 'The Temporary Stedelijk' (2010-12), that was initiated to maintain the museum's presence during its latest structural re-modelling.
The building's architecture and spatial layout is a highly considered element in the museum's functioning. It has been subjected to repeat financial investments and rearrangements, including the recent extension designed by Mels Crouwel (opened in September 2012). The result product is a contradictory design of staged objectivity and unmanaged visitor exploration, within an
institutionally manipulated and directed space. Since state heritage museums have faced great criticism in art theory since the mid-20th century, as manufacturers for state propaganda and
communicating imperialist nationalist feeling, their ideological nature is commonly acknowledged.1 On the opposite spectrum, the neutral aspatial aesthetic common to Contemporary and Modern Art galleries, such as at the Stedelijk, renders its authoritarian aspect less emphatically visible. Its appearance does not immediately incite a critical gaze and eases the visitors into compliance with its rituals, which are accepted for being the natural form of social relations.2 The contradiction
1 For significant literature published on the problems with display of public culture and national heritage museums see: Clifford, Hooper-Greenhill, Macdonald, more recently: Duncan, Walsh, and on minority under-representation and discriminatory bias in museum collections: Sandell.
2 It is not that Contemporary and Modern Art galleries have avoided criticism, but that their analysis requires a different skill-set and approach to visitor subjective experience than that of their state counterpart. The majority of literature on the topic has either been concerned with the 'White Cube' gallery design, or the multi-sensory
'spectacle' museum. As the Stedelijk incorporates aspects of both, these discussions will be discussed intermittently throughout this thesis. For examples of critiques concerning the organisation of displays at Contemporary and Modern Art galleries, see literature on The MOMA, New York, (which has received a great deal of theoretical
between surface level appearances and functioning processes, means the Stedelijk Museum is a particularly engaging example in which to explore the dynamics between individuals, large social groups and institutional organisations.
Through the investigation into the interplay between the visiting public and the museum, a privilege will be given to the spatial effects of the environment. This main focus is both specific, in regards to the subjective experience of the individual, and expansive, in relation to the Stedelijk's treatment and conceptualising of the space, and the relationship with the cultural objects on display. Since the museum visit is not an isolated experience but is multi-sensory and multi-faceted, other aspects will be taken into account, but consistently from a central focus and organisation towards the spatial.
Significant attention will be given to the Stedelijk's mobilisation of the space for disciplinary purposes, advancing social reform and normative behaviour, and communicating the museum's ideology. As space can be a political tool, its study may reveal other discriminatory and oppressive beliefs or practices, which occur alongside it/are implicit in its workings. A continuing underlying point of research will be the extent to which the visitor possesses self-agency, specifically in the degree to which they decide and create their own journey, and therefore can be considered complicit in the outcome of the museum experience.
The format of this thesis attempts to mimic the trajectory of an individual during a visit to the Stedelijk (in accordance with its curatorial organisation during September 2014 – January 2015). This layout is reflective of the distinct and generic nature of museum journeys, since they are highly individualised responses based on personal preference, knowledge and habits, and yet are contained within a standardised model that is repeated on a daily basis by many. Likewise, the choice of September 2014 – January 2015 for the museum's layout will be both essential, due to the
attention): Grunberg, Staniszewski.
references particular to its design, and an arbitrary selection.
Each chapter will be designated to an area of the museum and a corresponding aspect of study. Discussion will begin with a descriptive account of the visitor's subjective experience, and then followed by an in-depth theoretical analysis. This is intended to mirror both the place-making tendency of the museum, and its architectural organisation (wherein the individualised sections collectively form an overall functioning schema). If the organisation of the chapters is structural, the content will instead organically unfold as a composite patchwork of theory, cultural references and personal interpretations. By doing this it is hoped that a restrictive format will be avoided, allowing for some spontaneity and to create a gradual accumulative effect, akin to the nature of spatial experience.
A unifying reference will be the writings of Tony Bennett, who's reductionist framework of the museum's key aspects provides a good basis for organising an evaluation. Bennett's analysis on the founding principles in the 18th century public museum, creates a theoretical narrative stretching to the present day, and thereby allowing us to bridge between the museum's alternate historical and evolved forms.
The route of this thesis begins with chapters one and two on the exterior setting of the Stedelijk and its entrance foyer, with a brief overview of the theoretical discussions concerning the current scenario of museums in a late capitalist and globalised society, as well as how modernity and postmodernity have affected our approach towards space. Chapters three, four and five are focused on the downstairs trajectory and discuss Tony Bennet's analysis of the museum's disjunction between rhetoric and functioning, including visitor's social differentiation, cultural consciousness, complicity and spatial disorientation [Image 1].
IMAGE 1
Chapter six breaks from the essay format in an interlude designed to copy the transitional
experience of the escalator journey to the second floor. The journey is an important moment for the museum as it temporarily immobilises and passifies the visitor. As the experience brings to attention the sensation of duration it will be used as an occasion to reflect on the problematic nature and artifice of historical time - the concept on which the museum rests on [Image 2].
IMAGE 2
The last two chapters are dedicated to the top floor, with chapter seven discussing the security signs, the managing of subject-object relations, the sanctity of the museum and value creation. Afterwards, chapter eight will contemplate the significance in the museum's provision of a specific and spatial site for the interactions between socio-economic classes, as well as self-surveillance and the dynamics between space and power [Image 3].
Setting the Scene / The Exterior
The journey does not necessarily begin with the museum. The museum might not even constitute the largest portion of the trip. It may occur at some other less significant time than at the start, half-way through, or towards the end. Regardless of the extent in planning, effort and travel time that each individual visitor must undergo in order to negotiate their bodies to the position they are in now, at the museum's front revolving doors, nearly all will reach this point, the false beginning, the starting blocks. If the significance of this moment passes by the visitor, a visual roll-call of
attendance confirms the orchestrated presence of the main actor's in the city's cultural performance, under the grouping of the 'Museumplein' – the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum, the
Concertgebouw, and of course the Stedelijk Museum [Image 4].
IMAGE 4/Museumplein Image
The demarcation of a plot of land with a specific purpose rejects casual or accidental passing-by, and interprets your traversing across its grassy plane with a specific determination and intention, announcing your arrival emphatically via its identifiable 'I amsterdam' red sculpture – a symbolic replacement for the 'You Are Here' red arrow on a tourist map, and the equivalent to 'checking in' your location on virtual social media [Image 5]. However, within this highlighting of a specific place within a specific city and your specific location then and there within it, there is a further assignation of meaning to your spatial positioning via the imposed affiliation with the individual building you orient your body towards.
It is interpreted that your being here in front of the glass facade and white panelling was the result of a personal selection, a choice made by infinite numbers of other visitors but nonetheless your own choice is uniquely yours, securing you to the building [Image 6]. Yes, the front of the building does not so much welcome you but exclaims “at last you made it” and “glad you finally came”, instilling you with confidence in your (non-)decision, and securing your commitment at the final hurdle to enter the building. This is largely the result of the juxtapositional arrangement of the square, which builds on already existing economic competition with a false personal rivalry, by assuming that your visit to one museum is at the deliberate exception of another. Yet, the melodrama of the gesture is not executed in its entirety. The allusion to waring armies in their opposing trenches is reduced by the slightly non-symmetrical organisation, so the resounding finality of your decision is lessened and does not eliminate potential alternative additional visits.
Of course had you been standing beside the Rijks your arrival to the museum may have been less celebrated as a merit of personal character, than as the practical consequence of a successful global marketing campaign by a museum with greater resources. But from in front of the Stedelijk you are now banded to a tribe by your individual, conscientious, 'modern' and trendy artistic taste. You are rewarded with the polished gleaming shine from the glass walls, and the sleek smooth white surfaces of the upper section panelling. These are details which go unnoticed from a distance but are tactile and seductive up close. It is an object that must be experienced rather than merely
observed. Indeed, you know you are going to enter even before you do, it's all right there in front of you – you can see your mirror figure reflected in the glass and superimposed over the view of the restaurant, gift shop, ticket counter, and more! The shiny transparent boundary of the glass is easily permeable by your entry through the revolving doors, so that you delightfully slide in and join your clone self.
IMAGE 6 / FACADE
The form of the Stedelijk Museum as it is experienced today consists of the 1895 red and white brick building by A. W. Weissman, and the oblong shaped extension by Crouwel consisting of 271 white panels.3 The newer design comes with its own memorable nickname,'The Bathtub', and has therefore been assigned with a marketable and recognisable identity of its own. The reference to an everyday household object is significant. By creating an association to the familiar and
non-aesthetic, the museum deliberately replaces 'high-culture's' exclusionary and self-congratulating tendency for cyclical self-referencing, with a more accessible referent that renders the structure legible to the majority.
This choice of an object for reference is poignant given the vast critical analyses since the late 20th century, which have been concerned with the influences of a capitalist economic market on the processes and role of the museum. Both Fredric Jameson and Rosalind Krauss were critical of the new identity of the 'Late Capitalist Museum'.4 Krauss examined the close ties that were being formed with consumer culture and commodity industry as an effect of Minimalism and Pop Art, and the rise of new managerial curators such as Thomas Krens, Guggenheim, New York, who
employing brand marketing strategies sought international awareness (Krauss).5
Whilst the mix between the public realm and private financial interests might be less unsettling to
3 The total net size for the 1895 building is 10,023 m2, and of the new extension 9, 423 m2 (almost doubling the exhibition space of the museum) ('Expansion''). The total cost of the project cost €127 million and was supported by finance from Amsterdam's city council. In the year of the new extension's opening, the Stedelijk had 300,000 visitors – the largest amount in a year it had ever experienced ('Annual Report', 7).
4 Jameson wrote at length on the impact of capitalist ideology on culture: “(...) postmodernism is inseparable from, and unthinkable without the hypothesis of, some fundamental mutation in the sphere of culture in the world of late capitalism, which includes a momentous modification of its social function” (47-8).
5 Thomas Krens was director of the Guggenheim from 1988 – 2008 and is known for being one of the first museum directors to apply brand strategy for international recognition and reputation – a programme beginning in the 1990s he called 'Global Guggenheim'. Krens created the trend for the move from the curator's role as “research-oriented keeper of repository and collections” to a “politically-savvy marketing, education (new markets) and regeneration expert)” (Graeme 453). In the 2000s, after the 'dot.com bubble' crash, the museum faced numerous financial struggles, resulting in the highly publicised cancellation of exhibitions, selling artworks from its permanent collection and staff firings (Mathur 699).
Northern American societies, (and therefore was already having an effect on museums in the early stages of the dot.com boom and ICTs-based globalisation), the financial crisis of 2007-8 had a huge impact on the European art industry. Indeed, the stream of severe budget cuts to the art sector, that have continued in the aftermath, have made attracting financial investment from transnational corporations, outside of the art industry, a necessity for museums in survival mode (Mathur 697).6
The museum has been forced to think and act like a corporation in order to attract one, and thus is replacing its unique qualitative aesthetic sensibility, with a use-value economic outlook that treats its archive as commodities (Rectanus 386). The communicative technological infrastructures of the neoliberal global connextionist society acts as a mobilising agent, providing museums with the opportunities and processes to succeed in these new demands, through establishing a worldwide reputation. One such resource museums have, for the mediation and distribution of information between the institution and the public, is its exterior architectural design. Re-modelling, adding an extension, or the complete structure being designed by a 'celebrity' architect, can assure the building instant iconic status, press attention and a new landmark for the city's geography. In digitalised form its image can be viewed and shared through virtual reality, and act as a substitute presence in areas distant from its real material structure. Whilst in its physical form an unusual or attention grabbing design creates new touristic revenue from the public's incessant appetite for spectacle.7
In this way the Stedelijk Museum follows the precedent set by other European museums that have used architecture for economic growth, such as the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Tate Modern, London, and most notably the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, by Frank Gehry, which although cost over £70 million in construction drew, an estimated 1.3 million visitors to the museum in its first
6 Since 2010 the Stedelijk has ceased to have one single director for the institution, instead appointing a 'Managing Director' in combination with the 'Artistic Director'. The current respective directors at the Stedelijk are Karin van Gilst and Beatrix Ruf. This division of the leadership role over two figures is indicative of how the financial operations are now a vital aspect to functions of the museum.
7 Andreas Huyssen writes extensively on the attention-grabbing spectacle of the current formation of the museum as 'Mass Medium'. This will be discussed more throughly in chapter eight, but he does comment that the unveiling of new architectural designs are “managed and advertised as major spectacles (…) and the claim to fame of any metropolis will depend considerably on the attractiveness of its museal sites” (121).
year of completion (Evans 432). The success in attracting increased numbers of customers and generating new profits have made museum architecture a leading figure for marketing innovation and a “site for the representation of design and the design of representation” (Rectanus 391). Confirming this move towards a comodificaiton of design, on the Stedelijk's official website the museum has a sub-heading titled 'Outdated' which describes the 19th century Weissman building as “sadly outdated” due to “inadequate maintenance and lack of climate control” ('Expansion'). Whilst, under 'Facade Material' the text's focus is the composite material, “with Twaron fibre”, of the white panels, which are described in hyperbolic pseudo-scientific language that attempts to aestheticise technological innovation (Stedelijk, 'Expansion').
Furthermore, as a mostly transparent exterior, the facade is not without its similarities to a shop window, as if unconsciously parodying the museum's increasing commercialisation and the role reversal – the museum playing shop, the shop playing museum – that is presently being performed. The use of glass as an outside wall can be found in Modern architecture regularly, (its use to breakdown the exterior/interior divide now widely applied, if not cliché), and hence it is no longer only associated with places of retail. Although, the Stedelijk's facade functions in a way similar to a retail shop window, and which other urban structures that incorporate a high degree of glass do not (corporate headquarters, offices, banks, etc.). Since the latter often privilege the view looking outwards from inside, and therefore do not purposefully chase after the gaze of the passerby, the view inwards is one of a generic interior and a general suggestion of open space – openness for openness sake. Rather at the Stedelijk the view is purposefully specific, showcasing the activities and workings of its interior, and through its high visibility is welcoming rather than intimating, by familiarising visitors with the space. The glass partition is an idealised filter that generates desire and transforms the cultural experience into a tangible commodity for public consumption. In its transparency it also suggests a commonality with the surrounding buildings, connecting them based on their collective and complimentary offerings as part of the leisure industry of Amsterdam. In
fact, if the Museumplein is like a hyper-mall, then the main threshold has already been crossed and the visitor is browsing the options of the various departments from on the inside.8
These symbolic, historical, digital or economical signifiers that are thoroughly inscribed on the surface of the facade, relate to the museum's broad discursive context. Alternatively, the exterior itself is distinctly tied to its surrounding spatial environment, in a manner that makes the museum's potential for complete de-contextualised autonomy difficult, but not impossible. If the 'Global City' is one that is increasingly de-materialised (Castells, 'Network Society', 'Information Era', Virilio), the designation of the 'Museumplein' is a deliberate act in order to reinforce a sense of 'unity of place', whilst simultaneously having a transnational impact. The name itself binds the surrounding buildings to a singular identity, based purely on a reductive understanding of their intending function. By being situated within a carved out specialised setting, the institutions do not exist within, but in parallel, to other city neighbourhoods and since they are branded by their environment, do not experience the same level of anonymity.
The process of spatial cross-referencing is mimicked by the bodies's of the visitors, who approach the Stedelijk from either the building's left-hand or right-hand side, and then must circulate around its exterior to its inward-leaning entrance facing the square. The inter-relatedness between the buildings's relies more on the spatial organisation of the square, than its visual formal qualities. As the alignment does not allow for an unobstructed clear view of all the structures, it consequently places responsibility for completing the unifying gesture on the visitor's spatial cognitive
perception. Thus, this urban curating of the environment is one that subordinates visual observation, who's interpretative basis is in material evidence, to immaterial spatial experience and meaning
8 Artist Dan Graham, who has regularly used reflective surfaces in his installations, and Rachel Bowbly have both written extensively on the aesthetic and functions of commercial windows. For Bowbly its principle quality is its ability to portray products as both immediate and exotic: “The glass panel helped in the showing of the display, which was both completely visible, with nothing in the way of the sight, and kept at a well-designed distance. You could see it but not immediately touch or have it, so you were bound to see it as a 'sight to behold', set apart from where you were by the transparent partition.” (54)
created via imagined connections. The result is a subjective perspective which has firm roots in the immediate setting, but then extends out and beyond the physical environment.
The unique processes of this arrangement demands a performance from the viewer, which is greater than the general additive perspective of mere observation from the immediate setting. An artificial, cultural geographical map is created by the spatial joining of 'dot-to-dots', which extends beyond the parameters of the square to the surrounding city of Amsterdam, the community of countries in the European Union, and further to a mobile and indivisible community of transnational cultural institutions. Highly specific in its ties to place and yet generic in its expanse of affiliations, these micro- and macro- tendencies that underline the branding and arrangement of the Museumplein, are symptomatic of developments to subjective perspective in contemporary times. Related to other dualisms – the unique and the universal, the heterogeneous and the homogenous, place and non-place - these oppositions are of a particular spatial subjectivity, arguably brought about by and/or having influenced to heighten the acceleration of economic globalisation.
This economic globalisation, (that is supported by the flexibility of a neoliberal political economy and the space-time compression generated by ICTs technologies), has brought about a new
intensified significance to the relativity of 'place', wherein it is both irrelevant and substituted by a 'Global Village' world-view, and yet paradoxically more symbolically potent than ever (evidenced in renewed extreme nationalism and ongoing political conflicts based on territorial claims).9 It therefore due to this scenario that it possible to think of a spatial orientation based on a dialectic, not of segregated polarities but rather integration and mutual interaction, in which one is encouraged to continuously juxtaposition. In this way, extreme geographical poles and the 'here' and 'there' are distorted, so that it is utterly convincing for the Museumplein to transverse multiple trajectories. The square can successfully exist as a distinctly Amsterdam space with unique ties to its heritage
9 Marc Augé wrote that the resurgence of political nationalism can linked to a desire to “'return' to the localisation” of imperialism, and that its revival is illustrative of how “thought based on place still haunts us” (114). Augé's theories on space will be more elaborated on in chapter two.
and part of the local identity, and yet also relate externally to the global arts circle as a significant cultural and economic participator. Producing a “telescoping of any localisation”, the defining boundaries of the visitor's immediate environment is blurred and multiplied, as they simultaneously motion between different contexts whilst renaming physically still (Virilio 546). Illustrative of processes described by Paul Virlio, the referents of the square and museum facade reveal
themselves before the visitor in such a way so that they instantly arrive “without necessarily having to depart” (544).
Rather than being a purely personal spontaneous experience, in actuality this position has been deliberately capitalised on and promoted by, via the commercial industry wherein “what is called the local is in large degree constructed on a trans- or super-local basis” (Robertson 26). This can be seen in the partnership between Richard Florida and Amsterdam's municipal government, which began in the early 2000s and has effectively institutionalised this consciousness. Following the publication of his 'The Rise of the Creative Class', 2002, and what has been referred to as the subsequent 'Florida hype', Amsterdam became one of the leading cities in the discourse on 'creative cities'. Florida has confidently proclaimed an emergence of a post-industrial social group composed of creative professionals that “create ideas and innovation rather than products”. Being adamant in the potential commercial value stored in “creative capacity”, Florida challenged global cities to reconfigure their urban development policies with the intent to foster and support the needs and lifestyles of these creative professionals (143).
Such measures, it was argued, would foster greater creative innovation from already existing
professionals, encourage permanent residency from those working in competing international cities, and attract financial investment from transnational corporations (Florida 145). Amsterdam was one of the primary cities that opened itself up to adaption by Florida's schema, and in response Florida named it one of his 'Best Cities' - an ideal marriage perhaps given Amsterdam's liberalised trading
regulations and reputation for social tolerance to alternative and bohemian lifestyles (Peck 465).
In 2003 Florida was the main speaker at the Amsterdam event 'Creativity and the City', which was made to coincide with the opening of the re-developed gas-works, Cultuurpark Westergasfabriek (Peck 464). The result of the event was a published agenda for future urban policy titled 'Long-term Vision on Culture,' in which the municipal board wrote:
(…) the internationally acclaimed cultural supply should be promoted and the city's attractiveness to foreign cultural producers, institutes and tourists should be increased (...) (to) engender the creative city we want Amsterdam to be (…) where art and culture have a solid economic foundation (7).
Jamie Peck, a critic of the recent political urban trend of creative cities initiatives, has pointed out the irony in Amsterdam's increasing self-commodification, as it translates “its cultural
distinctiveness into a universally tradable competitive asset” (482).10
Significantly, this outcome reflects the standardisation and universalising tendency Robertson identified as present in
politicised discourse involving the 'local' (26), as discussed earlier, and thereby affirms a notion of globalisation as “the interlacing of social events and social relations 'at distance' with local
contextualities” (Giddens 21). So whilst the construction of the Musuemplein pre-dates these recent events, this political thinking has been instrumental in influencing contemporary treatment of Amsterdam's cultural institutions. A perspective filtered by the creative cities ideology transforms the urban environment into material incarnations of its cultural history, acting as micro
representations of evidence through which the identity of the macro-, the nation, can be
10 Peck makes a persuasive argument for seeing creative cities as a vehicular idea used to validate existing hegemonic political ideology - “legitimatising 'soft' economic-development policies” (464). Rather than creating innovative changes to the urban environment, it produces no real significant difference and only affirms the status and
practices of the municipal authorities - “achieving no more than marginal adjustments in budgetary commitments or socioeconomic outcomes” (Peck 464).
comprehended by the foreign visitor.11 This is intended to not only contribute to the city's identity narratives and international fame, but also to generate economic revenues. Hence, the Stedelijk museum cannot de-contextualise itself from the Museumplein, but is trapped in its grip and capitalised on by it. The museum is made responsible and indivisible to its surrounding city – its triumphs are Amsterdam's triumphs, and equally its economic dips or institutional failings are debts owed to the municipality, creative class, and the service class.
Within this contemporary context, the surface-level impressions and the interactions with the public that are performed externally, are more vital than ever to the institution's identity. Yet, the museum's more traditional place-bound role as a spatial site for sensory experiences is still its most significant aspect. Whilst, it may struggle to independently remove itself due to the dictates of economic necessity, from the interior the museum enacts distinct practices of control that uniquely belong to itself.
The Real Beginning / The Entrance Foyer
With barely any disturbance to its silky smooth surface your body permeates the transparent
partition of the glass. Needing no push nor force, its barrier to the exterior simply gave way and the space before you unravelled a path. You needed to time it right but you did and you entered into the vacuum of one of the doors, and were ushered in by their rotating blades seamlessly and stylishly. No interruptions or sudden pauses. Just the motion of your body now meeting, and now surpassing, your reflected image in one seductive electronic whoosh. Such glorious ease! One of the most natural transitions you've experienced – 'transition' is even too severe, too blatant for this well-crafted manoeuvre. With little to zero difficulty you have crossed the border and entered.
11 The increasing tendency to frame cultural phenomena by a historising gaze is discussed by Huyssen, who claims in current society “nothing escapes the logic of musealisation” (20), and by Marco de Waard who has theorised this “'museumisation'” in specific regard to the urban environment, as a place for “staging 'local' heritage in thoroughly place-bound ways” (143).
But whilst knowing where you came from and exactly what you left behind, without the theatrical dramatics of the security guards monitoring the door, bag check, or electronic ticket operated gates, there is no moment signalling your entrance, or conveying a sense of having arrived somewhere. Looking around at the room, the environment doesn't strike you but generally becomes made aware to you through motioning further inwards. It is a vast uncrowded space reaching far above and around you, and continuing on in the in-between gaps of the overhead white Bathtub, behind the gift shop, around the corner of the restaurant and down the staircase. It is a room, or 'rooms', of teasingly small gaps, slight partitions, incompletely closed off areas – so that it is not entirely certain if the objects/persons occupy the space, or if the space is the accessory to them. On the left there is the mid-section of the roofed basement yellow escalator, and next to it the stairs to both levels, so that the room simultaneously contains all three floors of the museum.
Behind them is the glass wall of the restaurant, and on the right the ticket counter, gift shop, cloak room and lockers, and then a seating area. Ahead of you is the red and white brick wall of the original building, and then the gallery rooms. Yet between these areas there is hardly anything to fill the space, and the foyer's sparsity is both unremarkable, in there being no bombastic attention-grabbing object to draw your focus, and remarkable in its plainness. A foreigner to this environment there are a limited number of things to encounter so to bring out information, as to the nature and practices of the place. Barely anything more than a small circular table on the left opposite the ticket booth, and a rectangular information desk further behind it. Yet, this also means that the time to discern the space is quick and occurs simultaneous to your movement. Your options are few, and unless you wish to break chronology and visit the shop or restaurant before visiting the galleries, it is quickly apparent that you are to move forward to the ticket booth. In a short distance you queue, purchase ticket, exit to the left, and arrive at bag check. From there, the space on your right is the back of the gift shop and next to that is a seating area, which is most likely intended for the end of
your visit as a resting or meeting point. So almost as if by automatic impulse, you've reached the four small steps leading to the open archways, and a museum attendant is asking you for your museum card or ticket.
This is the first moment your mobility has been paused by a figure outside of yourself, all other moments – entering, ticket purchase, bag check – were of your own doing. It makes you wonder is this the natural start to the gallery? Is this the real beginning? Looking over your shoulder you make a double-check. There was the staircase and the intriguing escalator on the left, should I have gone towards them? But then which one and why either of them over this? In fact why any one of these options over each other? But then through the archways you glimpse the familiar sight of white walls supporting various canvases (the aesthetic you've come to expect and recognise Modern art galleries by). The final prompt are six white arrows on the wall to the left, pointing and prodding you forward, they need no interpretation and are the authoritative push you need to make the final commitment. And with that you've completed the final stage of the conversion from neutral public citizen, to solicited external passer-by, to active participator. This is the end of the beginning.
The entrance foyer of any building might seem to be the space that is most thoroughly specific to a place. Indeed, the term is instantly indicative of both its location (at the front of the building), and its function (as the welcoming space for guests), and therefore can be considered the space most indivisibly tied to the institution it belongs to. It may even be more representative of the character and practices that go on within the building than the facade, which is subject to other influencing variables of urban environment (as we have seen in chapter one). However, if the Stedelijk's exterior and its setting within the Museumplein were characterised by a paradoxical relation to specific and multiple contexts, the experience of entering the museum and its foyer is not the reconciliatory moment one might be hoping for. The curation of the space is as such that the orientation has been distorted, or rather - flattened. With an excess of anonymous space spreading
out all around and surrounding the visitor, the centre has been moved, then re-moved and perhaps re-moved again until it is no longer possible to talk of a central orient unless to speak of its complete removal. Where is the front of the room and where is the back? It is not without poignance that the view across from the visitor when they enter is the 'front' entrance of the galleries, in the back rooms of the 19th century building, and on a side-on position to the new extension and main road outside.
To investigate the uncanny nature of the Stedelijk's entrance hall it might prove useful to adapt Marc Augé's theory of 'supermodernity', with particular regard for the aspect he terms “spatial overabundance”, and that the foyer can be considered an exemplary representation of. Whereas the exterior facade of the museum was encountered by the visitor through many levels of economic, political and social significations and therefore associated with multiple contexts, the experience of shifting subjectivities in the foyer is not enacted through the symbolic power of referents, but arguably via a changing in scale. Indeed, when discussing the facade it was possible to use Paul Virilio to describe the possibility of a subjectivity that juxtapositions across several spatial spans, so that “'elsewhere' begins here and vice versa” (544). Expressing a similar sentiment Augé claims the supermodern “people are always, and never at home” (109).
Yet, whilst Virilio sees this due to alterations in temporality, Augé gives us an example of how this can be located in the spatial.12 Specifically, 'space' in supermodernity is characteristically
represented in “excess” and thus our experience of it is as such (Augé 29). This excess has distorted our spatial equilibrium and our standard space-world perception. Remarking on the effects
supermodernity has had on place-making Augé relates several perception-altering key phenomena, including: the opening up of geographical space and the undermining of political boundaries via greater travel and accelerated mobility, over-exposure of world destinations and projection of
12 For Virilio with space-time compression and geographical divides being eliminated the “relevant interval analysis shifts from space to time and, ultimately, to light”, and so whilst “spatial escape is still possible, temporal escape is not” (547).
televised images of far flung destinations into home living rooms, and even outer-space exploration and colonisation:
(...) the excess of space is correlative with the distancing from ourselves embodied in the feats of the astronauts and the endless circling of our satellites. In a sense, our first steps in outer space reduce our own space to an infinitesimal point, of which satellite photographs appropriately give us the exact measure. We are in an era characterised by changes of scale (…) (31).
This paradoxical expanding and contracting, of breaking boundaries to re-establish new limits, wherein a technological-modernising event has the fictitious illusion as a freeing and progressive act, but rather creates further restrictions on our consciousness, is to Augé the core way in which “spatial over-abundance works like a decoy” (31). The hyper-inflation of scale can be found in the treatment of space in the Stedelijk's entrance hall, where the expansive, bright illumination and lack of shadow creates an optical spatial swelling. Yet, due to its irregular shape the Bathtub that runs overhead alters this, so that it is not a universal expansion of space or a singular heightening of scale. Rather, the recessive depth of space is random, varied and spontaneously revealed through the visitor's exploration the site, meaning that their size in relation to the building is constantly shifting and unstable. As such, the effect is both an immediacy and a distancing – whilst you permeate deeper through its properties, fully submerge yourself within it and encounter the material space, you discover further unforeseeable depths and the parameters appears to re-adjust and withdraw away from you.
This is also related to the entry point of the museum being ambiguously defined and re-experienced repeatedly (from the section of the Museumplein the Stedelijk occupies, to the
revolving doors of the entryway, to the official act of purchasing a ticket, and then to handing over your ticket to an attendant and walking into one of the gallery rooms). Since the museum distances
itself, the spectator is projected back on and into themselves. The experience is felt internally, as with very few visual clues or prompts, (the occasional sign or directional arrows), the visitor enacts cognitive reasoning and processes of elimination in order to correctly follow the procedures of the museum.13 The space is the opposite of what Augé terms 'Anthropological Place', wherein
“everything there is to know about it is already know” and all one is required to do is to “recognise themselves in it” (44-5). Instead, the visitor is prompted into a cyclic process of self-gazing, a “turning back on the self”, as if “the spectator in the position of a spectator were his own spectacle” (92).14 If Anthropological Place is dependent on a belief in the “idea of a culture localised in time and space” that is self-contained within its society and capable of being revealed transparently to the individual (Augé 34, 49), the Stedelijk museum is an empty referent and disengages itself from a participatory two-way dialogue with its visitors.15
In its minimal ornamentation, rejection of narrative meaning and indicators of the processes of its production, the Stedelijk represents the behaviour of Modernist architecture as “a kind of erasing craft which removes the history of its making” (Donovan 119).16
Indeed, the term Virilio gives to the new form of representation in the virtual age – an “aesthetics of disappearance”- could be applied here, only the sense of immateriality is not due to the intangible nature of digital networks (542), but in its disconnection from the material present by way of no historical or cultural referent. If Augé is to be agreed with, then the Stedelijk entrance hall can be considered to be an overly vacuous space that the viewer, to compensate for this lack, over identifies and conceptualises, so to
13 This will be elaborated on in chapter 4, with discussion of how this internal reasoning is not wholly independent from the institutional dictates of the museum, but rather, through sensations of spatial disorientation, is made into a disciplinary tool.
14 To Augé this type of subjectivity is one of the most prominent ways supermodernity broke away from the traditions of modernity. The interactive and assimilated figure of the 'flaneur'/urban spectator, is instead replaced by a solitary infinite regression internally (92).
15 A belief in Anthropological place refers to a conception of a society's identity being tied to and visibly detectable in its material territory, and therefore creates the notion of authentic culture and historical legacy (Augé 44). Augé disparagingly refers to it as the “totality temptation” and a “useful and necessary image: not a lie but a myth” (47-8).
16 Kevin Donovan discusses Modernist architecture's stylistic characteristics, including its mimicry of the aesthetics of impersonal technologies of mass production (as opposed to artisan masonry). Due to this the “message of the work is ambiguous” and Donovan has severe doubts about the ability for the buildings to communicate effectively to and with its public (Donovan 119).
create some type of relationship to it. This process is described by Augé, (in his consistently abstract style), as:
(…) an overburdening or emptying of individuality, in which only the movement of the fleeting images enables the observer to hypothesize the existence of a past and glimpse the possibility of a future (87).
These aspects may be true more generally for the treatment of space by commercial enterprises, and hence are another way in which the museum can be linked to commodity design. In describing the architecture of supermarkets, Rachel Bowbly argues that excessive use of expansive space and bright lighting is, in fact, blinding rather than revealing:
It is Plato's cave in reverse, not a darkness that hides the light of the truth but a blaze of totally artificial illumination (184).
The false openness of the Stedelijk entrance hall does not enlighten, but creates a feeling of lacking. Capatilasing on this wanting as delaying tactic, the goal is repeatedly moved and extended, and thus the desire projected further into the museum. The result is provoked mobility in the visitor who chases after the lost object of their desire, and for a feeling of satisfied closure. However, it remains to be seen if the Stedelijk's detachment and removed presence will be rectified through further exploration.
Expressed Aims / Room 0.1
It is not entirely clear what deserves your attention or necessitates a closer look, and what is merely background decoration. Standing in the middle of the room it is possible to make out coloured
capitalised words strewn across the left-hand side of the wall, before this a large rectangular metal slab in block colours, and on the right a vivid decorative scene featuring a bird, a man and a flower painted onto the surface of the wall.17 It is not that they are 'bad', you have no judgement against them, your standing there – what might otherwise be interpreted as a moments pause of hesitation or reluctance – is actually because you are not entirely sure what is to be done, here, in this room. Looking out from where you are it is possible to see almost the entirety of the objects before you, so you feel like you know them, know all there is to them. And yet you haven't learnt anything,
nothing gleamed from them, apart from their particular combinations of red, blue and white, with the titles or the artists they belong to as of yet unknown.
Rather than a judgement against the artworks, it is due to the facts of your position. You did not enter from the left, or appear from a right-hand door. Instead you were returned your museum ticket and walked directly in front to here, the centre of the room. Hence, no inflection to the left and no inflection to the right, and no artwork to be immediately in association with. Since you cannot hope to fall into the general vicinity of an artwork near to you, it is going to to require you to make a decision. You are going to choose one of these large artworks, (despite having observed the majorirty of their appearances already), and make great strides in its direction, until you are standing in front of it.
Then, since it is an artwork which is too large for such close inspection, you will most likely take further steps backwards, re-tracing the path you have just taken. You may even walk to the opposite wall, read the description text and then turn back to face the artwork, comprehending it in a new light with the information you have learnt. You are moving, and it's noticeable, and people will notice your movements. It is a signal to those around you that you are spectating and considering the objects on view, and that cannot be done from the middle of this room. Nor can it be done from
17 Referenced artworks: 'Scattered Matter/Brought To A Known Density/With/The Weight Of The World/Cusped', 2007, Lawrence Weiner, 'Untitled', 1989, Donald Judd, and Karel Appel's 1956 mural for the museum's former restaurant.
the middle of room 0.2, 0.3, 0.27, or any other room. You being here in the museum is going to require you to move, whether it is beneficial to your viewing experience or irrelevant to it.And the chances that your movements are going to be wholly self-willed and determined by your own preference/desire/thinking, is increasingly being brought into doubt.
In 'The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics' Tony Bennett critically examines the
opening up of private cultural space via the rise of public institutions late 18th century and early 19th century Western Europe. Subscribing to a Foucauldian historical perspective of the social
construction of knowledge and hegemonic power structures, Bennett applies an institutional critique on the founding and continuing practices of the museum – an establishment of corrective instruction and social reform much like Michel Foucault's asylum, hospital and prison. The consciousness of the museum was thus born from a specific 'political rationality', (understood to partly include Foucault's 'Modern Episteme'), and its subsequent processes and philosophy were intrinsically shaped by its historical and political circumstances.18
Yet, Bennett is clear to point out that the relationship between the historical rationale and the museum is a dialectical one. He argues that the museum is not merely an expression of its time but rather it has own unique processes, specifically developing new forms of technologies for societal control and discipline ('Birth' 71, 89).19 The social role of the museum is therefore core to its being and its reforming effects on behaviour, both within its doors and on a wider societal level outside, are not inadvertent end-products. Since they are not bound to historical circumstances it is possible to prove these processes are enduring, and are being continually renewed in ongoing practices of museums world wide today.
18 Foucault used 'episteme' to refer to the particular logic, “the strategic apparatus”, distinct to an epoch that forms the basis of its ideas, beliefs and practices (ie. its discourse): “at any given moment, there is always only one episteme that defines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge” ('The Order of Things' 168).
19 Bennett disagrees with the representation of museums as singularly the “instruments of ruling-class hegemony” wherein they are “thought of as amenable to a general form of cultural politics”, in disregard for their own “specific institutional properties” ('Birth' 91).
For greater clarity and added strength to his argument Bennett breaks down the complex systems underlying the museum, by dividing its functions into a binary format: the expressed aims and the concealed functions ('Birth' 90). The expressed aims were: equal accessibility for every social grouping, and to accurately portray all of humanity through a representation of total Culture
(Bennett, 'Birth' 90). Both aim's success were reliant on the existence of a society that was unbiased, undifferentiated and cohesive, and were appealing to populist contemporary intellectual calls for the democratising of state powers and universal rights.20
However, having based their aims on an idealist vision of society and a mistaken faith in
universalism, the museum founded itself on an irrevocable contradiction and an impossible standard – fundamentally at odds with the nature of society and the necessary requirements of the institution. This disjunction between the museum's rhetoric and its actual practices has exposed the museum to continual public criticism and dissatisfaction. Criticism not just restricted to one perspective but potentially voiced by many divergent affected parties, over any time period henceforth ('Birth' 97, 103):
Where this is so, the space produced by this mismatch supplies the conditions for a discourse of reform which proves unending because it mistakes the nature of the object (Bennett, 'Birth' 90).21
In terms of the expressed aims of the Stedelijk, like most public brands, the museum actively
20 The writings by Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were some of the most influential to social theory in France during this era. Rousseau's 'Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men', 1754, is a typical example of revolutionary literature on the importance of universal civil rights.
21 Bennett includes current criticisms of the museum's under-representation of minority groups and
sexist/discriminatory/orientalist perspective as modern day manifestations against the museum's original claims: “(the protests) arise out of, and are fuelled by, the internal dynamics of the museum which lends them a pertinence they did not have, and could not have in 18th century cabinets of curiosities” ('The Birth' 103). His own, somewhat simplistic, view on the situation is that protests need to be reformulated from an angle of “the right to make active use of museum resources rather than an entitlement to be entertained or instructed” ('The Birth' 105).
produces information for public consumption and is highly self-expressive. This is generated and circulated over various platforms on a regular basis, and even via immediate daily announcements (i.e social media outlets and email alerts). The data it creates is intended to both relate to the wider art museum discourse, - with concerns for the importance of artistic creation, art preservation and education etc. -, and to differentiate itself via carving out a specialised area for its own personal concerns and unique understanding.
Thus, one type of published information which is specific to the Stedelijk but adopts the format general to museums is its printed floor-plans [Images 1-3]. As interpretative representations, the floor-plans reveal the museum's most ideal vision of itself and the workings of its space. Although the floor-plans are minimalist with little surplus information and no accompanying images, they are still rather complex, having to accommodate for the added extension and the multiple exhibit spaces that are integrated into the main areas of the building. Colour is the most expressive facet with it being used by the museum to distinguish between the differing gallery spaces (eg. green is representative of 'Design', red for temporary exhibits such as 'How Far How Near' and 'Marlene Dumas'). The image is a highly reductive representation and whilst the structured and rational appearance is alike to the aesthetic of the Modern artworks that adorn its walls (ie. Russian Suprematism), it also could be interpreted as rejecting an artistic sensibility for the distant and factual gaze of science.
By adopting a logical rather than artistic style, the museum can reduce the sense of its aspect as an authoritative and intervening figure, for instead a representation as the source for objective
information. With no descriptive inset images, no main viewing attractions specified and no room named specifically after a single figure or movement, (although a key below the map reveals the location of prominent artists), the areas are only distinguished by a numerical ordering system. The over-arching numbering system includes the additional exhibits and therefore has a unifying role,
adding to a representation of space as neutral and universal. Space is treated as a non-descriptive and an unbiased entity – an empty vacuum that has been barely altered or described, only contained within small straight black outlines. Its unanimity is encapsulated in the symmetrical rendering of the left and right-hand sides, which are almost a complete mirror-image of each other.
Moreover, this sense of unbiased space is also conveyed via the lateral design that suggests an equal significance on both sides, and reverses the traditional association of the museum's role as a
fortified multi-tiered container protecting precious booty.22 Depth is subverted so that there is no logic to a sense of peeling back the layers of the Stedelijk, or traversing deeper into its space and therefore symbolically further into its cultural wealth. Whilst the top floor plan is not as
proportionally balanced as its ground floor correspondent, due to the added extension being more prominent, the co-joining space does not dominate or threaten to over-shadow the main building. Rather it plays a complimentary supportive role to the primary structure and thus reduces the aspect of human intervention or manipulation of the space. The occasional male stick man (to indicate exits/entrances), female/male/disabled figures (the universal sign for toilets), a key symbol (for lockers), and arrows (to indicate elevators) are the only representations of human encroachment. The resulting appearance of the space given by the Stedeljik's published plans is one untouched or manipulated by artificial interference, and therefore undetermined by institutional directives.23
In addition to this representation of its space in objective terms, so to withdraw its immanency as an authoritative body influencing the visitor's experience, there could be another significance. In displaying its space abstractly and devoid of artistic feeling, the Stedelijk services the visitor by
22 The traditional approach to museum design as a temple/monument to sacred cultural objects was in part shaped by Neo-Classical architect Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand's 'Precis des Lecons', 1802-05. His understanding of museums as places to “conserve and to impart a precious treasure” can be seen in a whole host of European national museums built in the 19th century (Giebelhausen 225). The Louvre, Paris, (first used in the 12th century as fortress), The National Gallery, London, The British Museum, London, and the Uffizi, Florence, (built 15th century as a palace), are all examples of museums that compartmentalise and layer space to create internal recessional depth. 23 For a comparative example see the Rijksmuseum visitor floor-plans, which uses an artistic rendering of the layout
to convey a more permeable and less regulated space. Whilst, this is a more relaxed representation of spatial boundaries than the Stedelijk's floor plans, by using an explicitly artistic style the Rijks references its institutional intervention into the space.
producing for them the bare and essential information. It is thus not unlike the material results driven orientation of STEMM subjects, (science, technology, engineering, medicine, mathematics), that are generally politically favoured and receive greater state funding than the humanities and visual arts disciplines. Popular political thinking and capital focused economic structuring, privileges the former areas of the 'knowledge economy', believing they accrue results which are transferable to the non-academic/cultural sector for financially profitable gains (Docherty). Hence, that cultural capital should be manifest and have observable influence outside of its specialised realm, might be responsible for the Stedelijk's treatment of its floor-plans as a packaged unmediated exchange of information to the visitor.
Further, this political-economic thinking can be related to literature available on the Stedelijk's official website, which places a preeminence on its educating role. In discussion of its official 'public programme' that includes weekly lectures, film screenings, art performances, adult and family guided tours, the director of the museum, Ann Goldstein, is quoted saying:
Education is one of the Stedelijk Museum's core responsibilities. We believe in the importance of introducing younger generations to art, and stimulating them to think and talk about it. We encourage people to explore and discover under the motto 'turning confusion into curiosity (Stedlijk, 'Fact Sheet').
On the one hand, Goldstein's language communicates a programme for learning as a personalised voyage of self-discovery. Yet, education, even cultural education, always has an element of institutional instruction, determinism, and is often a point of socio-economic class contention. By not merely allowing for a spontaneous and organic self-education, but rather drawing key attention and significance to it, the Stedelijk ironically reverses its liberal approach. In terms of marketing, if the museum can show itself as a vehicle for specialised information with observable social results, it thereby raises the value of its assets and legitimises its position in society during a period of
financial austerity.
Lastly, the Stedelijk advertises its product as suitable and adaptable to a mass audience:
The Stedelijk Museum is a landmark that, like Amsterdam itself, offers a fantastic mix of old and new, traditional and hip ('Fact Sheet').
From its appeal to a host of different tastes and its offering of these arrays of styles in a creative and cutting-edge blend, the museum markets itself to almost all possible types of people. Its open invite has the positive effect of being both undiscriminating and differentiating as it excludes no one, and yet recognises all artistic preferences in a way that highlights the uniqueness and individuality of its public. The museum appeals to a notion of a universal appreciation and sense of affiliation to an artistic culture, and which it grants undiscriminated and equal access to. This democratising gesture is also explicit in its unbiased representation of its space in its floor-plans. However, if Bennett is correct this rhetoric of the museum's is based on a false universalism and does not have an equal counterpart in its functioning reality. This moment of disjunction is already suggested in the last quote, which although had an assimilating intention, also created differentiation by describing a fractured and pluralist society. If the museum's expressed aims were contained in textual and visual static representations, the concealed functions can be found as manifesting in the lived spatial experience.
Concealed Function – Differentiation / Rooms 0.1 – 0.10
Now that you are a fully willing spectator motioning through the space, unavoidably the next set of questions that present themselves are: where are you moving to? Where is the goal? What is the
objective? If you were to consider the purpose of the visit you might vaguely relate it to viewing and contemplating an example of Modern art, perhaps even hoping to enjoy the experience. But the answers to the other two questions are not as straightforward. At the present moment the journey ahead of you is not familiar: the rooms unexplored entities, the objects they posses also unknown, the amount of distance between each room, and the depth of space ahead of you unclear; these are foreign lands. The rooms lay out before you by an unquantifiable distance and through an infinite number of combinations. Every step is a new plot on a timeline that, as of yet, hasn't been
ascertained. If the duration of the journey is unintelligible how are you to know the goal? The finishing line of 'The end' might be as fluctuating as 'The beginning', which has occurred multiple times already, or as ambiguous as 'The middle', which you could possibly be in right now.
In this case, the above questions may be helped by a further question: what are your options? You could refer to your floor-plan [Image 1], which indicates that the room on the left is room 0.27 and is part of the 'Design' section of the museum, and the room on the right is room 0.2. This suggests that numerically the room to the right is next in the chronological order. Since room, room 0.1, was portrayed as the first gallery but upon experience is rather like the museum's anteroom, then the next room entered should be considered the real first gallery room. Therefore, the insignificant side opening does not correspond to this, but rather seems like an afterthought; a design accident, a last minute addition. In fact now that you are moving the rigid logically ordered floor-plan seems to be incongruent and in defiance to your physical and sensual perceptions. Instead, the spatial
organisation is pulling you forwards, through one of the two large archways in direct parallel to the entrance, and a continuation of your journey as experienced so far. In contrast to the small right-hand side doorway, they represent minimalist triumphal archways, so you enter on through.
But yet again: what are the options? The question reappears. This is because the space you have entered is not to your expectations – there are no artworks, its white – but not a 'painted white wall'
white, but rather a 'whitewashing over an older Neo-Classical architecture' white, and there is marble tiling instead of wooden flooring. It's a room posing to be an art gallery room, a bad copy of room 0.1, and – dare we say it? - another entrance space. Therefore, clearly a transitioning site, there are many options that lay out before you, and the process of choosing one is almost like that in a video game:
Oh no! 'Philistine' the terrifying art-destroying barbarian is near and ready to attack you. You must not pause any longer, for fear his evil low-brow mallet will club you and strip you of all your cultural taste. Where do you run to?:
A. 1st Room on the right B. 2nd Room on the right C. Central room
D. Room on the left
E. Stairs to the second floor
F. Small information desk/gift shop and entrance/exit at the back G. Back room on the left
H. Back room on the right
[J. Use sword to kill the brute/run away]
The results to each attempt are as follows: A. and B. turned out to be toilets and a cloak room, C. is the 'Family Lab' for parents and children to enjoy art based activities, and D. was a staff room. Then walking down the left-hand side of the room to the back, you find the staircase to the upper floors, option E., which doesn't appeal since you've barely experienced the ground floor– save that for 'The middle'. Turning around, you face the small back room with an information desk and a large exit (if it seemed to early for option E., option F. is definitely eliminated). Therefore, it leaves options G. and H. The offerings of option G. is a mostly empty room with a red leather sofa facing a television,
whereas option H., although mostly walled off, does offer you a glimpse of several artworks hanging on view. After all these options the last seems like the only appropriate choice. You then proceed from room 0.15 around the right-hand side of the gallery up until room 0.10. Excluding the 'How Far How Near' exhibit, there is only one door for entry and one opposite door for exit per room, so that you follow a singular sequence. It is as if after many false starts and moments of pause you are now on the slipstream of the museum.
Continuing Bennett's analysis it is posited that although the museum's rhetoric expressed an unbiased and inclusive understanding humanity, its actual functioning was reliant on, and further exacerbated, existing differentiation in the visiting public. One can regard this functioning as 'concealed' not only in the respect to it's 'behind closed doors' nature as operating via internal processes, but also in its element of disguise via theoretical ambiguity. The persuasive use of popular ideals in its rhetoric allowed the museum to appeal to vague abstract principles, acting as a sophisticated method for opacity from critical gaze. The ability to inhabit the vacuum between social ideals and practical reality, allowed the museum to capitalise on the inevitable ambiguity, as a way to express one thing and perform another.
This might explain why Bennett's museum seemed to controversially declare and even depend on the principle of a spatial-social dialectic, which would otherwise seem to undermine the innocence of the museum. The institution's open expression in its potential to affect the interactions of people within its parameters, goes against the traditional default position taken by political bodies, which regularly promote an aspatial understanding of space. In contemporary times these organisations have been increasingly driving a divide between the social and spatial, through a growing de-politicisation of the public realm, and state emancipation from the social in all ways except basic welfare responsibilities (Young 69-70).
An aspatial understanding is a particularly powerful ideology as it can have a normalising effect on social organising by universalising “the specific social forms and relations of the capitalist mode of production into permanent, 'natural' relations” (Smith 80-1).24 Yet, the museum's open intentions to bring together diverse people and unite them by a common culture successfully manages to avoid negative responsibility and subsequent critical response, due to its fundamental subjective and contextual contingency. The degree of institutional intervention is precisely conditional on the individual's moral and world outlook – the less social harmony perceived in the world, the greater the museum's interference – and thus it presents an ambiguous abstract 'win-win' scenario for the museum.
Even so, (or rather because of this disjunction between abstract principles and functioning reality), the visiting public represented a more complex social body, and raised issues about the managing of disparate groups. A tendency shared by the majority of Western social theory born from
Enlightenment thinking, the museum's rhetoric, through its appeals to principles of 'equality' and 'humanity', de-contextualised human experience and thereby “invokes a kind of false universalising that rests on some version of an original and common human state” (Tonkiss, 'The Ethics' 66).25 Instead, the museum’s actual reality shows a more nuanced representation of universality and difference, not as polar opposites in contradiction with one another, but rather as existing in a shifting and mutual relationship. Its public was not a standardised, homogeneous and identical grouping, but nor were they so disparate that there was no commonality between them (capable of being emphasised and used to unify them). In addition, the situation also led to a risk of improper relations and a misdirected sense of unity within the grouping, with potentially subversive
24 These remarks are striking in their noticeable similarity to Brian O'Doherty's comments on the 'white cube' art gallery design. In both cases an aspatial treatment of space is normalising, but where Smith is concerned only with socio-economic relations, O'Doherty sees the gallery as creating an “appearance of eternality over the status quo in terms of social values and also, in our modern sense, artistic values” (9). Whilst, the white cube gallery's attempts to “censor out the word” so that it appears “untouched by time and its vicissitudes” are illusory, as it still promotes and enforces an ideology over its visitors (O'Doherty 9, 4), it is not a social space to the same degree as Bennett's museum or the Stedelijk is.
25 This traditionalist approach to civil equality has been increasingly rejected by social theorists, and Charles Taylor's 'The Politics of Recognition', (famous for being one of the founding texts of Multiculturalism), put forward a programme for a “politics of difference” in replace of the “politics of universalism”.
