MA Art History, Modern and Contemporary Art Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
July 2018
First reader: Dr Leo Delfgaauw
Second reader: Prof. dr. Ann-Sophie Lehmann
RUBBING, SMELLING, HEARING AND TASTING ART
IN CONTEMPORARY MUSEUMS
THE SENSORY NARRATIVE
OF THE CURATOR
“He made, with marvelous art, an ivory statue, as white as snow, and gave it greater beauty than any girl could have, and fell in love with his own workmanship. The image seemed that of a virgin, truly, almost living, and willing, save that modesty prevented, to take on movement. The best art, they say, is that which conceals art, and so Pygmalion marvels, and loves the body he has fashioned. He would often move his hands to test and touch it, could this be flesh, or was it ivory only? No, it could not be ivory. His kisses, he fancies, she returns; he speaks to her, holds her, believes his fingers almost leave an imprint on her limbs, and fears to bruise her.”
Ovid, Metamorphoses.1
PREFACE
Before you lies the dissertation “The sensory narrative of the curator: rubbing, smelling, hearing and tasting art in contemporary museums.” Commissioned by the University of Groningen, this thesis is part of the curatorial study track within the Art History program at the University of Groningen. In an intensive learning period of five months from March to July 2018, I was engaged in researching and writing this thesis. At the beginning of this process, the dream of graduating as an art historian was far away, exciting and very unreal at the same time. During these five months, I familiarized myself with the material and learned a lot about the cultural relationship between the five human senses. As well as my learning process, and my strengths and weaknesses. In this preface, I would therefore like to reflect on the people who supported, critically challenged, and helped me throughout this period.
I want to thank my supervisor Dr Delfgaauw for his guidance, feedback and his insights that kept me on course as well as letting me experiment with the exciting offshoot subjects that we identified. To my fellow master track modern and contemporary students, I would like to say thank you for your incredible support, our debate sessions and the exchange of baffling ideas. Also, I would like to thank my tutor, Tjitske Dijkstra, who pointed out my growth and was a brilliant sounding board for clearing my thoughts. Finally, I wish to thank my beloved friends and my mother Leonie Heebink who have supported me throughout this process with their kind and wise words and providing a sympathetic ear that kept me motivated. Even at times when they had their challenges. Thank you all very much.
I hope you enjoy reading (this thesis).
Jolijn Dorieke van Aart
ABSTRACT
The sense of sight is still dominant inside the galleries and, because of this notion, has a generous influence on the narrative and the display strategy. Barriers keep the public at a safe physical distance from the artefacts. A mental distance is created by turning the museum in a pseudo-sacred space, where the people need to control their pace, their voice and their hands. However, in today’s society more and more contemporary art museums are experimenting with multisensory exhibitions in their gallery spaces. Through a combination of literature research and the comparison of two case studies, this thesis explores the role of the senses in the narrative of the exhibition and the relationship between the curator, artefact and visitor. Drawing from the theory of art historian Michael Baxandall and the findings of Constance Classen, a cultural expert of the senses, an analysis of the sensory and social ideas within the museum is made. With these theories in mind, two recent immersive multisensory exhibitions which focus on a new experience of the museum's collection are examined. Next, the
reception of these exhibits by several the art critics are added to the study. Further research may reveal the position of these kind of exhibitions within the contemporary cultural climate by analyzing the museum policy and the national policy and their goals and prospects.
TABLE OF CONTENT
PREFACE v ABSTRACT vii 1. INTRODUCTION 2 2. FROM INQUISITIVE BEHAVIOUR TO A TABOO. 8 2.1 The early museum 9 2.2 Autonomy, inquisitive behavior and intimacy 10 2.2.1 Autonomy 11 2.2.2 Inquisitive behavior 13 2.2.3 Intimacy 15 2.3 The increasing dominance of sight 17 2.4 A change in the sensuous epistemology hierarchy 19 2.5 The Sensory Turn 21 3. TWO MULTISENSORY NARRATIVES 24 3.1. Representation of multisensory display strategies 27 3.1.1. The ‘Tate Sensorium’ August 26th 2015 until October 4th 2015 27 3.1.2. ‘#artSmellery’ April 26th 2017 until May 7th 2017 30 3.2. The challenges of the interaction within the narrative 33 3.2.1. The mutual impact of the narrative and the display strategy in Tate Sensorium 36 3.2.2. The mutual impact of the narrative and the display strategy in #artSmellery 38 3.3. Comparison of the multisensory designs 40 4. THE RECEPTION OF THE MULTISENSORY PRESENTATIONS 42 4.1. The Tate Sensorium a thought-provoking experience 44 4.2. #ArtSmellery expresses the value of scent 47 4.3. A sociological issue and the question of the paradox of interpretation 49 5. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 52 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 56 BIBLIOGRAPHY 561. INTRODUCTION
The meaning and role of the museum in our society is changing as we speak. Museums no longer only focus on conserving the artefact and educating visitors as much as possible. This shift is reflected in new kinds of events and an increase of temporary blockbuster exhibitions, which aim to attract a diverse audience.2 Striking is that, in the museum experience of the visitor, the senses play an increasingly important role. The museum experience consists of several layers, such as proprioceptive, sensory, intellectual, aesthetic and social, and in doing so has various outcomes.3 The result can be: sensory stimulation, wondering, learning, reflection, relaxation, social interaction or remembrance of past events.4 Consequently, this thesis will focus on the underlying strategies and narratives used for of the sensory experience in art museums.
Based on my observations, the curator is the person who constructs this experience by structuring the objects on display and their outcomes by using a narrative in the exhibition. Therefore, the narrative and the display strategies have a mutual impact on each other and affect the relationship between the object, the curator and the visitor, depending on the desired kind of experience and outcomes. These beliefs encouraged me to investigate the construction or narrative of an exhibition and the mutual relationship between the exhibition-maker, the viewer and the artefact. For these reasons, I have further researched the theory of
Michael Baxandall’s Exhibiting Intention: Some Preconditions of the Visual Display of Culturally Purposeful Objects (1991).
Baxandall sees an exhibition as a construction of objects that he describes as a field.5 Within this field, the exhibition-maker’s arrangement of displaying the objects, the object’s producer and the assumptions of the viewer are the three agents that interact within this field.
The three agents, as Baxandall defines them, are always intertwined in a dynamic and complex relationship and change at every exhibition. In his formulation, one needs to be aware that every exhibition is a product of the context, interpretation and capacities of each of 2 Pama, Gretha. 2018. ‘Museumcollecties zijn de dupe van de blockbusters’. NRC, 11 April 2018. Accessed 24 April 2018 https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2018/04/11/collecties-zijn-de-dupe-van-de-blockbusters-a1599155. 3 Levent, N. 2014. p. xiii. 4 Ibid. The outcomes may occur one at the time or in a combination of forms. 5 In this theory, Baxandall is not explicitly describing an art museum with conservators or curators, artworks and artist. However, his approach is far more anthropological in a sense that he is referring to objects that could be made for a cultural context such as religion or practical tools.
these agents. He emphases that the “ideas, values and purposes” of these agents all differ and play a role in the narrative of the exhibition.6 The first agent, the artist, relates to the culture from which the artist’s object originates or the context in which it was made. The artist is active in the field through the form of his artefacts “that are a deposit of his activity.”7 The second agent, the curator, possibly refers to a theory or a concept of culture in his display of the objects, which the visitor is not always aware of. The curator’s activities are complicated. They include presenting and displaying the artefacts in a newly constructed context, which is not necessarily the context the object was made for by the artist. Additionally, an activity of the curator is to instruct the audience about the new context or narrative the object is currently in.8 The tool he uses for this is a label. The third agent, the viewer or visitor, has a cultural background and baggage that influence his ideas, values and purposes that play a role in the field. Baxandall specified the characteristics of the viewer as visually interested in the object and prepared to make an effort to understand these objects. Baxandall emphasizes the
teleological or functional aspects of the object. However, I firmly believe that this also applies to the aesthetic and the art-historical aspects of the object. For this model to function,
Baxandall points out two essential guidelines to which each agent must oblige to function in the field correctly. To begin with, all the three agents are active participants in the exhibition. Secondly, the agent’s activity is structured, and the agents play each a distinctive role in the field.9 6 Baxandall, M. 1991. p. 1. 7 Ibid., p. 3. 8 Ibid., pp. 2-3. 9 Ibid., p. 2.
Fig. 2. Visualization inspired by M. Baxandall Exhibiting Intention (1991). Illustration: Author.
Fig. 1. Visualization of Michael Baxandall’s theory: Exhibiting Intention (1991). Illustration: Author.
It has become clear that the exhibition is a field in which three agents operate that are all constitutionally divers and behave all differently within the exhibition. However, “how are we to conceive their activities coming into contact?” 10 Perchance we imagine that their activities are coming into contact “in a space between the object and label.”11 The label serves the object by passing information from the curator to the visitor. In short, it is more than just a piece of paper and includes all of the construction of the exhibition that is part of the new context and therefore of the narrative. However, when the object changes, the label or narrative is also edited. Therefore, the narrative can influence the choices for a particular display strategy and vice versa. In this intellectual space, all the agents become active and contribute to the determination of the object’s meaning, which is activated in a new narrative. The active contribution of each agent to the exhibition therefore also affects their subordinate relationship, which does not always appear to be balanced. In this thesis I refer to other terms for the same agents to connect it to the multisensory exhibitions within contemporary art museums. Therefore, the artist becomes the artefact, because of the artefact is the material presence of the artist or maker of the object and is recontextualized in the construction of the exhibition. Furthermore, the exhibitor becomes the curator, and the viewer becomes the visitor. [Fig.1&2]
Adding to Baxandall’s theory, Constance Classen, a cultural historian who is specialized in the history of the senses in museums, describes the development of the
rapprochement of the senses in the early museums. These two theories will act as a guideline for the entire thesis. In her publication The Book of Touch (2005), she outlines the subject of touch in a historical, sociological, cultural and contemporary rapprochement. One of the highlighted angles is the development of the distinction and rapprochement of the senses in museums. Next, Classen describes that since the nineteenth-century both a physical and mental distance is created between the visitors and the artefacts. In combination with the dangers of theft and the conservation of the objects, a need was born to eliminate the physical interaction between the visitors and the artefacts. Additionally, the museum became a
‘pseudo-sacred space'; artefacts were removed out of time and space and grew superior to humans, which resulted in a mental distance between the artefact and the visitor. Both these forms of distance went hand in hand with the stimulation of the privileged sensory organ of
10 Ibid., p. 3. 11 Ibid., p. 3.
sight.12 Nowadays, visual perception is still dominant over the other senses within museums.13 The display settings are always constructed to keep the public at bay, for example through separation lines with alarms and glass cases or cabinets. The theories of Baxandall and Classen can be used to analyze these sensory and social ideas within the museum. It is therefore gripping how the narrative and the display strategies influence the relationship between curator, artefact and the visitor, and how this relationship changes over time.
In the 1980s and 1990s in particular, what is also described as the Sensory Turn, led to the first changes. Simultaneous to the redefining of the meaning and role of the museum, our knowledge about the function of the perception of experiences and cognition has increased as a result of research into the human brain. These developments created an interdisciplinary cooperation between cognitive researchers, curators, artists, educators, historians and many others.14 Within this expanding interdisciplinary field, Constance Classen finds the lack of an increase of human interaction with the artefact in museums very peculiar. She states that “the museum as we know it is still a product of the sensory and social ideas of the nineteenth-century.”15
Detectable changes in the form and function of museums are caused by new sponsors artists and curators. Some contemporary artists, who display their work in galleries and museums, create artworks for interaction, to be touched, smelled or tasted. Another example can be found in the form of different exhibitions and events organized by museum curators. Two examples are Tate Britain’s Sensorium and the Stedelijk Museum’s #artSmellery. Both Tate Britain in London and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam organized an exhibition in which the museum experimented with artworks in combination with the senses. Both
museums displayed several artworks of their collection in a new way: next to the ‘dominant’ sense of sight, other senses were addressed.16 The curator chooses to employ different technologies which allow visitors to experience the artworks through touch, smell or taste
12 Classen, C. 2005. pp. 282-283. 13 An important note is that more and more museums have programs for visually impaired, blind and deaf visitors regarding special guided tours in sign language or special touch tours where visitors can touch a selection of objects or replicas. 14 Classen. C. 2005. pp. 282-283. 15 Ibid., p. 282. 16 The Tate Britain and the Stedelijk Museum differ in the number of senses that they stimulated in the display strategies. Tate. n.d. ‘IK Prize 2015: Tate Sensorium’. Tate. Accessed 24 April 2018. http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/display/ik-prize-2015-tate-sensorium; Stedelijk Museum. n.d. ‘#artSmellery by Siemens’. Accessed 24 April 2018. https://www.stedelijk.nl/nl/evenementen/artsmellery-by-siemens-2.
without endangering the works of art, all that while exciting the experience of the visitors. This research focuses on the second example, where the curator is working with multisensory display strategies in an exhibition and is not concentrating on the artists who work with the senses.
The theories of Baxandall and Classen will be applied to compare the two
multisensory exhibitions, Tate Britain's 2015 Sensorium and the Stedelijk Museum's 2017 #artSmellery. By comparing the theories to the presentations executions, it can become clear how these display strategies work with the narrative and the interaction between curator, artefact and visitor.
The next step is to connect the development of the senses or sensory experiences such as touch and smell, to the reception of display strategies and artworks by art critics. Therefore, multiple articles written by several critics and interviews with curators or directors of the two museums are part of the analysis.
The development of the restriction of the senses in the past and present is
fascinating.17 Regardless of the - for now - unknown motives, these kinds of exhibitions can be an exciting fusion between the two roles of the museum, which was mentioned at the start of this introduction. Therefore, the research question is:
“In what way is the role of the narrative visible in the exhibitions by Tate Britain's ‘Sensorium’ and the Stedelijk Museum's ‘#artSmellery’ and how do art critics receive these kinds of display strategies?"
This thesis’s methodology is a combination of literature research and a comparison of two case studies. The historical research concentrates on the development of the use of the senses in the presentation of artworks in exhibitions from the eighteenth century. The literature research connects the two different museums that applied multisensory display strategies, such as the Sensorium at the Tate Britain London and #artSmellery at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Within the case study this research will focus on the connection between the theories of Baxandall and Classen. The differences, similarities and the position concerning the reception by art critics will also be part of this research. Therefore, the research consists of an analysis of multiple articles written by several critics.
17 Described by Classen in The Book of Touch (2005), Fiona Candlin in Art, Museums and Touch (2010) and
The structure of this thesis will be as follows: The first chapter starts with a description of the theory of Baxandall, the structure of the thesis and the method that is used. The second chapter elaborates on the historical evolution of the increasing sensory restrictions, the discussions surrounding the development of the Sensory Turn in the 1980s and 1990s, and to what extent the theories of Baxandall and Classen relate to this development. The third chapter consists of a brief review of Tate Britain's Sensorium and the Stedelijk Museum’s #artSmellery. In both exhibitions, the museums experiment with multisensory display strategies to give visitors a new experience of their art collection. The fourth chapter focuses on the reception of art critics. What did these critics write or say about these exhibitions? In the fifth chapter I will connect my findings about the case studies and the reception of diverse art critics whilst using the theories of Baxandall and Classen. Additionally, I will give my vision on the curatorial problems that surfaced during this process and present
2. FROM INQUISITIVE BEHAVIOUR TO A TABOO.
“Touch helped bring the museum to life.” 18
There are many different art museums in the world, and most of them have one universal rule, that says: “Please don’t touch!” The traditional ‘hands-off’ ethos in art museums is more and more challenged at the moment but it is still the norm. Exhibitions are still designed for our eyes, instead of for our noses, hands, ears or mouths.19 However, this hands-off ethos was seemingly not always maintained. From the sixteenth until the nineteenth century, visitors interacted with artefacts through their senses in the cabinets of curiosities, private collections and early museums. Visitors were welcome to touch, rub, shake, look at and even taste the artefacts in a collection.20 It is difficult to determine how people used their senses in the museum. However, thankfully, many visitors and a few curators put pen to paper during their travels and described their experiences in the museum. The three main lines that can be reduced from their journals as well as Constance Classen’s findings are the notions of autonomy, inquisitive behavior and intimacy. These experiences were achieved through the use of all the five human senses, only the sensory freedom within the walls of the museum ended towards the turn of the nineteenth century. The visual perception gained dominance over the other senses from that period on and display settings were increasingly constructed to keep the public at bay. A number of distancing measures such as separation lines with alarms and glass cases have been employed since. At that time Western philosophers, scientists, and social etiquettes re-evaluate the physical and mental distance between the curator, visitor and the artefact. Both these forms of distance went hand in hand with the stimulation of the privileged sensory organ of sight and changed the “epistemological hierarchy of the senses.”21
18 Classen, C. 2007. p. 903. 19 More and more contemporary art museums create special ‘touch' programs for the visually impaired. Moreover, they offer guided tours for the deaf community and people with Alzheimer's disease. Fiona Candlin discusses the role of touch in the museum for the visually impaired in “Don’t Touch! Hands Off!, Blindness and the Conservation of Expertise,” Body & Society 10 (2004): 71-90. 20 Levent, N. 2014. p. xvii. 21 Classen, C. 2005. pp. 282-283; Nieuwhof, A., 2017. Olfactory Experiences in Museums of Modern and Contemporary Art, smell as a new curatorial strategy. (dissertation), Leiden. p. 2.
To answer the research question; “In what way is the role of the narrative visible in the exhibitions by Tate Britain's ‘Sensorium’ and the Stedelijk Museum's ‘#artSmellery’ and how do art critics receive these kinds of display strategies?” it is necessary to understand how the epistemological hierarchy came to be where it is today. This chapter analyses Classen’s description of the change in the epistemological hierarchy from the seventeenth century up to the twentieth century. Within this analysis, she also takes into account the sensory and social ideas within the museum in that period. It is gripping how these changing social and sensory ideas also influence the way the curator, artefact and visitor interact or come into contact with each other in the intellectual space of the narrative, as touched upon by the theory of
Baxandall in the previous chapter. For this reason, this chapter creates a historical overview of the epistemological hierarchy until the
twenty-first century and thus illustrates the connections between the role of the narrative, the display strategies and the relationships of the three involved agents. [Fig. 3.]
Notwithstanding, different authors, educators, artists and many others challenged the hands-off tradition and its restrictions on the senses in the mid and late twentieth century, a period which is better known as the Sensory Turn.
2.1 The early museum
The art museum is a rather young institution that finds its official origins in the nineteenth century.22 However, the history of the art museum can be traced back to cabinets of curiosities and private collections found as early as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.23 Large museum collections that emerged from the cabinets or private collections are for instance the British Museum in London, Great Britain and the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, the
22 Hudson, K. 1975. p. 1.
23 More on the early history of museum see Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor, eds., The Origins of Museums:
The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Europe. (Oxford, 1985).
Fig. 3. Visualization inspired by M. Baxandall Exhibiting Intention (1991). Illustration: Author.
Netherlands.24 In the seventeenth century already, private collections were cared for by a curator and visitors were welcomed.25 A curator was expected to create a house tour and present the collection to visitors. Paintings were not just collectables but also satisfied visitors during the walks in the large villas.26 As a refined host, it was common to offer guests a chance to touch and examine the artefacts. In return, the visitors that handled the objects would ask questions about them.27 Touching the artefacts was such an essential part of the visitor’s experience that denying to let visitors handle an object would lead to accusations of “of incivility.”28 The relation between the curator, the artefact and the visitor was in that period purposefully grounded in the hospitality of the curator. According to Audrey Davis and Hans-Urich Obrist, both art historians, curators, and critics, the roles of the curator developed alongside with the changes of society and art, after which the role of hospitality became less and less prominent.29
2.2 Autonomy, inquisitive behavior and intimacy
The reason cabinets of curiosities and private collections attracted visitors was, according to Classen, “their ability to offer visitors an intimate physical encounter with rare and curious objects.”30 This intimate interaction with the objects is part of the social etiquettes and
regulations that were customary in that period and can be traced back in travel journals. These 24 The British Museum was created by Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), who left his large collection of works of art and books to the government in 1753. The Teylers Museum is the Netherlands’ first museum and is established during the enlightenment in 1784. The Teylers Museum carries the name of Pieter Teyler van der Hulst (1702-1778) a wealthy Dutch banker, cloth and silk merchant, and philanthropist. The building has a history of over 200 years old and the collections can still be seen in their authentic context. 25 Highly recommended is the anthology by Carole Paul The First Modern Museums of Art: The Birth of an Institution in 18th- and early 19th-Century Europe (2012) for more information about the development of the collective history of the art museums. 26 Classen, C. 2007. p. 897. Mark Girouard, Life in the English Country House (New Haven, CT, 1978), pp 100-101. 27 Classen, C. 2005. pp. 275-276. 28 Ibid., p. 276. 29 Obrist, H-U. 2014. pp. 27-33. The first curators in the Louvre were called décoratuers. These artists worked in the Louvre and organized and created the annual exhibition of the Academy. He states that it is important as a curator to collaborate with the artist in order to display the artwork. A prediction Obrist makes is that the roles of the curator and of the artists will develop in the next years because it will develop with the changes in the arts. 30 Classen, C. 2007. pp. 896-897.
elements are, again, components of the sensory history of the museum. Nowadays is it uncommon to touch artworks in museums, while in the seventeenth century it was taken for granted.31 Many art historians, such as Kenneth Hudson, journalist and museologist, and Classen, describe in their publications how visitors from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries wrote about their experiences in the, what we now consider, the early museum.32 Analyzing their publications and the fragments from the travel journals, three main points stand out: the experience of autonomy, inquisitive behavior and intimacy. It is
interesting that through these three points a connection can be made to the activities of the curator, the artefact and the visitor, and thus the interaction between these relations can be analyzed.
2.2.1 Autonomy
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the artefact was in total control of the curator. The primary sense that was engaged during the interaction between the visitor and the artefact was touch. The sense of touch is, according to Classen, associated with the manual license of possession. For this reason, both pictures and sculptures were adjusted to the wishes of the curator. Loose parts of sculptures were added to other sculptures to create new forms.
Paintings were cropped to current taste, or to fit different frames or fill otherwise wasted wall space.33 It was also common for collectors and curators to handle the artefacts, because “one is free to touch what one owns.”34 Possession of the artefacts was equivalent to control over the interaction between the visitor and the artefact. Despite the extent of control, curators could extend the privilege of handling to a visitor as an ultimate form of courtesy.35 The license of possession was not limited to handling an artefact but extended in the form of taste, smell and sound. The curator and the owner would sometimes have meals with visitors in the exhibition spaces in between the artworks. Sir Hans Sloan for instance, who formed the foundation of the British Museum, was one of the collectors who found the museum
31 Classen. C. 2005. p. 275. 32 Constance Classen refers in The Book of Touch (2005) for the most part to the visitors experience in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. 33 Ibid., p. 280. 34 Classen, C. 2007. p. 898. 35 Ibid., p. 898.
equivalent to the concept of a meal.36 Coffee was served in the library at the end of a guided tour and when the Prince and Princess of Wales visited in 1748 all kinds of polished jewels, gems, silver and gold ornaments were placed on and around the tables as part of the dining experience.37 Another fashion of addressing the sense of taste and perhaps the ultimate form of proprietorship was eating an exhibit, for example a type of birds’ nests. A German traveller Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach describes this experience when he visited the Sloane’s collection as following:
“Among other things he pointed out to us the nests that are eaten as a delicacy. It is said that the material is formed in the sea like the succino and used by the birds to build their nests. But, judging from its taste, appearance and feeling, I took it for a gum or resin....”38
Interesting is that Von Uffenbach was invited to take ownership of this particular artefact by consuming it. Next to his sense of taste, the curator also stimulated him to investigate the nests by using his sense of touch, smell and sight. This interaction through the senses can create a bond between Von Uffenbach and people who see this as a delicacy and eat the nests as well. “The nests that are eaten" become therefore “the nests I have eaten.”39 To relate this to the triangle symbolizing the theory of Baxandall, the curator stimulates the visitor to use his senses and thus creates a new narrative in which the object is given a new meaning. Although the museum itself was conceptualized as a meal, Sloane was not careless with his collectables. When the composer George Frederic Handel was a visitor of Sloane in 1740, he awkwardly placed a buttered muffin on top of a valuable manuscript, causing the host to lose his courtesy.40
As courtesy and autonomy began to collide more and more, the privilege of handling an object was no longer something that was offered to the visitor but became a requirement. Visitors insisted on handling the object, but curators were not necessarily happy about this
36 Ibid., p. 905. 37 Hudson, K. pp. 19-20. Hudson described this placement of the exhibits as a form of symbolism for a royal feast. Gavin de Beer in Sir Hans Sloane and the British Museum (1953) also mentions this event only he doesn’t agree with Hudson. De Beer sees this placement of the artefact just as a sign that the collection of Sloane had outgrown the exhibit spaces of the museum. p. 133. 38 Von Uffenbach, Z. p. 187. 39 Classen, C. 2007. p. 905. 40 See Edward Miller, That Noble Cabinet: A History of the British Museum (Athens, OH, 1974), pp. 38-9.
development. Touching as a vital element of the museum experience made it difficult for curators in the time of the early museum to protect the collection. Damage, theft and the interaction with the object had a crucial effect on their perception of visitors. The underkeeper of the Ashmolean describes the encounter with a demanding visitor in 1760:
“She desired me to take the Glass from off several of the Drawers, which I was
somewhat unwilling to do, lest anything be lost by that means; which she perceiving she told me that I was not quite so civil as might be; that the last time she had seen the Museum ... she had handled and examin'd the Curiosities in the Cabinet as long as she pleas'd.”41
The curator increasingly had to relinquish the degree of his control over the artefacts. Where the license of possession approved the processing of works of art by cropping the canvasses for different frames, the damage or breakage by a visitor was unacceptable.42 Moreover, curators tried to balance the demands of conservation and requirements for physical access.43
2.2.2 Inquisitive behavior
The relationship between the visitor and artefact was all about investigating. Picking up, smelling, touching, rubbing, shaking and even tasting the object were expressions of
inquisitive behavior. All the senses had a specific value for the museum experience and were even supported by scientific practice.44
Classen, as well as Fiona Candlin, Professor of Museology at Birkbeck University of London, emphasizes especially the importance of touch for the interaction between the visitor and the
41 Classen, C. 2007. p. 898. Cited in R.F. Ovenell, The Ashmolean Museum (Oxford, 1986), p. 147. 42 The curator and the collectors wanted to prevent damage to the artefact. Only, conservation was definitely not a priority just as historically authenticity. The exhibition areas were far from the standards that museums handle nowadays, moisture created an ideal habitat for bio organisms to damage the collection. 43 Classen, C. 2007. p. 899. “The great seventeenth century collector Cardinal Mazerin attempted to keep his collection intact without making it untouchable by delicately reminding guests that "these pieces break if they fall.”; Paul Fréart de Chantelou, Diary of Cavaliere Bernini’s visit to France, A blunt and G.C. Bauer, eds., M. Corbett, trans. (Princeton, NJ, 1985), p. 185. 44 Classen, C. 2005. p. 227-277; Classen gives multiple examples by among others Robert Hook and John Evelyn.
artefact.45 The intimate physical encounter with the artworks, curious objects and ornaments that the aristocracy had collected was a rare experience that only the early museums and the cabinets of curiosities could offer.46 A visit to these institutions was at that time a relatively informal affair, where rules and regulations were not that important. Although, the rules about the interaction with the artefacts were not that stern, there were entry regulations.47 One of the functions of touch is the ability to correct the fallacy of the sense of sight.48 This is expressed in the travel journal of Celia Fiennes, a English traveller, who documented her attendance at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in 1694.49 During her visit to the Ashmolean she was amazed by what appeared to be a heavy cane, only when she put her hands on it, she
discovered it was “as light as a feather.”50 She also experimented with the magnetic forces of a loadstone in the Ashmolean Museum.51 Another function of touch, for the interaction between the visitor and the artefact, is supplementing vision especially with regards to texture. For example, the visual impression of a sculpture is never the same experience as the tactile impression when you put your hands on the marble and feel the smoothness or erratic texture with your fingertips.52
The sense of sound is another a critical aspect of inquisitive behavior and therefore of the interaction between visitor and artefact. Visitors could listen to the artefacts that made sounds, such as rattling egg yolks or the crunching noises of the bird nests in their hands or mouths when they ate them. Foreign music instruments with unfamiliar sounds and tones were interesting objects that could have come across as very strange. Von Offenbach
encountered “an elegant Indian organ” with the “most agreeable sound” during his visit to the Claudius de Puy collection in London.53
45 “If unauthorized touch is factored in (...) it is clear that many museums are far more multisensory than is generally acknowledged.” Quote Fiona Candlin in Giaimo, Cara. 500. ‘Why Can’t People Stop Touching Museum Exhibits?’ Atlas Obscura, 19:00 500. Last seen April 3th 2018; http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/museum-touch-exhibit-objects-multisensory. 46 Classen, C. 2007. pp. 896-897. 47 Example: The British Museum for instance had a policy that people can only enter the museum if their shoes were clean. This meant that only people who had a coach could enter the museum because they didn’t have to walk. 48 Classen, C. 2005. p. 277. 49 Fiennes, C. 1949. p. 33. Celia Fiennes (1662-1741) was an English traveller who kept multiple journals in the period between 1684 and 1703. 50 Fiennes, C. 1949. p. 33. 51 Ibid. 52 Clasen, C. 2007. p. 900. This combination of correcting the fallacy of sight and supplementing the sense of vision gave touch the upper hand as the sense of certainty, according to Classen. 53 Ibid., p. 904.
The olfactory experience was just as vital as the other senses for the inquisitive behavior of the visitor and therefore for the interaction and the museum experience. In the article Museum Manners: The Sensory Life in the early Museum, Classen describes the sense of smell mainly as a result of the scents of the exhibition spaces and the decaying artefact such as animal remains.54 Moisture created an ideal habitat for bio-organisms to damage the collection, so this musty odor must have played a role in the museum experience.
Additionally, not to mention the coal smoke especially in the cold winter months, when the fires were still fueled with black coal.55
The social etiquettes and norms continued to allow visitors to use the whole body for their inquisitive behavior, while the curator and the collector were not always content with this social construction. Therefore, in the Ashmolean Museum, the curator's privilege of handling the artefacts was still extended to the visitors until 1827.56 The risk of damage and theft was outweighed by the importance of the museum experience with the sense of touch ranked high in the sensuous epistemology hierarchy. This consideration also confirms the importance of the mutual relationship between the curator, visitor and artefact.
2.2.3 Intimacy
As well as a way to investigate the artefact by touching, rubbing, tasting and smelling, the senses could also create in a way a form of intimacy. Touch not only supplements and corrects the sense of sight, but it also establishes a physical connection.
“Sight requires distance in order to function properly, detaching the observer from the observed. Touch by contrast, annihilates distance and physically unites the toucher 54 Classen, C. 2007. p. 904. In this article, she also refers to the symbolic history and importance of smells. “Generally, smell had more powerful symbolic associations and a larger ritual role in early modernity than it would have in later times. Anthony Wood records, for example, that during the entry of James II into Oxford in 1687, eight women clad in white strewed fragrant herbs before the king's retinue "which made a verie great smell in all the street, continuing so all that night till the raine came ... "Odour was understood to be a sign of an object's or person's intrinsic "virtues" or traits. As shall be described below, this gave smell a chemical, as well as a symbolic importance.” 55 See Evelyn, Diary, vol. II, p. 502 and Altick, Shows of London, pp. 88, 89. 56 Classen, C. 2007. p. 899.
and the touched. Handling museum artefacts gave visitors the satisfaction of an intimate encounter. In case of a human made artefact, it also provided the thrill of coming into vicarious contact with their original creators and users.”57
In this statement, Classen outlines the connection touch provides between the visitor and the artefact (or the toucher and the touched). Interestingly is that according to her “the sense of sight requires distance to function properly,” although in my opinion that is not necessarily the case. What comes to mind is that the sense of sight also can observe details and corrects its misconceptions. Sight especially can draw the viewer inwards and create a mental or physical connection to feel close to the artefact.
A century prior to the period of the early museum, Italian art historian Benedetto Varchi already asserted that the sense of touch was essential for the spectator to connect with a sculpture;
“Forbidding museum visitors to touch sculptures would have the effect of denying them access to the art in the highest level. Whether out of aesthetic sensibility, sensuous desire, or simply curiosity (…) to admire the contrast between their fluid, life-like forms and their inherent, stony matter.”58
Only through touch, a visitor could appreciate the transformation from a raw material such as “marble into seemingly soft flesh.”59 The physical connection did not limit itself only to sculptures. Paintings, too, were touched by visitors in the past, for the same reasons of intimacy and investigation of both the figures portrayed and the texture of the paint. A story where these senses establish a connection with an artwork is expressed in Ovid’s narrative of Metamorphoses where the Cypriot sculptor Pygmalion carved a woman out of ivory.
However, although the woman was not made of real flesh and blood, the sculptor started to develop intense feelings for his own carved sculpture. In the story, Pygmalion expresses a wish to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, pleasure and procreation, and when he kisses the sculpture out of love, to his surprise, the ivory lips feel warm to the touch. Just as Pygmalion it was not uncommon for people to stroke or kiss the pictures of saints or family members to
57 Classen, C. 2005. p. 277. 58 Ibid., p. 279.
get closer to the divine or feel intimate with their loved ones.60 For instance, Leonardo da Vinci, a king “preferred holding a portrait of his beloved to hearing a poem about her because the painting was something he could see and touch, and not only hear.”61
Likewise, olfactory experiences especially carry a personal and social significance. “Smells are indelibly linked to notions of identity, place, memory, lived experience, and cultural sensibility” and connect the person who sniffs to the smelled object.62 Interaction with the artefact can also be seen as a form connecting with the portrayed and finding a form prestige by “transferring power” from “distinguished hands in the past” and getting closer to the divine.63 Other visitors like Sophie de la Roche felt a personal connection with the creator of an ancient exotic ornament during her visit to the British Museum. 64
Where all the senses were first used for the visitor’s physical and mental interaction with the artefact, it later became an undesirable aspect of the museum experience. Therefore, in the transition of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, a campaign against the additional senses as part of the role of the activity between visitor and artefact has started, with as a result that the sense of sight gained dominance.
2.3 The increasing dominance of sight
The importance of senses other than sight for the understanding and experiencing of the whole nature of the object was not meant to last. Whereas the curator could get in severe trouble before for not allowing a visitor to touch an artefact, this philosophy completely changed in the late eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. Both a physical and a mental distance between the visitors and the artefacts were created for multiple reasons. As a result, the museum became a ‘pseudo-sacred space’: artefacts were removed out of time and space and grew superior in their relationship with humans. Hudson emphasizes that artefacts became “masterpieces and treasures” that needed to be kept in their timeless state.65 In 60 Classen, C. 2005. pp. 279-280; For example, look at the foot of Saint Peter’s statue at the Saint Peter’s Cathedral in Rome. Touching the foot of the saint would bring good luck and the connects the toucher to the divine. 61 Ibid., p. 280; Cranston, 2003. p. 226. 62 Drobnick, J. 2014. p. 183. 63 Classen, C. 2007. p. 903. 64 La Roche, S. de. 1933. Sophie in London, trans. C. Williams, London: Jonathan Cape. 65 Hudson, K. 1975. p. 52.
combination with the dangers of theft and the conservation of the objects, the need to
eliminate the physical interaction between the visitors and the artefacts was born. The creation of these forms of distance went hand in hand with the stimulation of the privileged sensory organ of sight by museums and modern science.66
The taboo on touch has a considerable effect on the activity of the viewer, which in turn has a direct effect on the interaction with the other two agents. The artefacts on display have become more important than both the visitor and the courtesy of the curator. This alternation was made clear by a change in behavior. Where there was first an expectation of inquisitive behavior from visitors, they are now supposed to control themselves. The visitor is now expected to keep their pace moderated, their voices low, and their hands to themselves and enlighten their minds only by using their eyes. 67 Touching was no longer seen as an extension of the curator’s hospitality but as a form of disrespectful behavior from the visitor, and was therefore deemed damaging and dirty. The way in which the viewer was allowed to learn about and experience the collection has changed. Initially, learning was thought of as a combination of seeing and feeling until the Enlightenment emphasized the importance of the mind. Engaging with the artefact was no longer an aesthetic or cognitive function. In short, the position of the curator towards the artefact became closer and more exclusive, while the visitors became more distant from the artefact, their interaction was reduced to a minimum.
The restriction of the senses was not just a shift in expectations of behavior from the visitor, it was also implemented in the display settings and therefore influenced the narrative of exhibitions. The display settings have been constructed to keep the public at bay since the nineteenth century.68 Physical distance prevents theft and damage to the artefact yet still allows the visitors to see the collection. In order to allow visitors to see the artefacts more clearly, the lighting has become more prominent.69 In 1840, well-known art critic Anna Jameson described how everyone could recall the days in which museum visitors wandered around and were “touching the ornaments- and even the pictures!”70 Teylers Museum in 66 Classen, C. 2005. pp. 282-283. 67 Ibid. 68 In the seventeenth century glass cases were too expensive and only used for very delicate objects. Only then it was still common to lift the glass cases and delicately handle the artefact. 69 Classen, C. 2005. p. 282. 70 Classen, C. 2007. p. 897; cited by Frank Hermann, ed., The English as Collectors (London, 1972), p. 126. Classen refers also to a continuing shift between the social etiquettes in museums; “While touching museum pieces was apparently once a common phenomenon, Jameson’s remark indicates that by the mid-nineteenth-century the practice was eliciting the same disapproval that the time-honoured custom of eating with one’s hands begun to incur among the upper classes a couple of centuries earlier.”
Haarlem is an example of an art and science museum that stood the test of time. As it was established in 1784, it provides insight to an enlightenment museum. [Fig. 4&5]
The dominance of sight can also be traced in western philosophy, science and later in the new art theory formulated by Heinrich Wölfflin and Aloïs Riegl.71 Different scholars such as Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Wölfflin, Riegl and others stimulate the importance of a civilized society. They believed that the sense of sight was at the top of evolution and connected to cognition. In contrast to the sense of sight, the sense of touch was supposedly connected to children’s behavior and the uncivilized primitives.
2.4 A change in the sensuous epistemology hierarchy
Up until the eighteenth century, the sensuous epistemology hierarchy remained more or less balanced. Every experience from smells, sounds, taste, sight, and touch played a vital role in the understanding of the whole nature of the object in the museum. Because of the restriction of the physical and mental distance, the balance was redefined and “sight gained mastery over the other senses,” and as a result, the senses smell, and taste were “placed at the bottom of the epistemological hierarchy.”72 In 1754 the French philosopher Étienne Bonnot de Condillac
71 More information about the position of Heinrich Wölfflin and Aloïs Riegl towards the additional senses see
Fiona Candlin, Art, Museums and Touch (2010).
72 Nieuwhof, A., 2017. p. 2.
Fig. 4. Teylers Museum, the oval room. © Teylers Museum.
Fig. 5. Teylers Museum, fossil and instrument room. © Onlinegalerij.nl
stated that smell, of all senses, contributed less than the other senses to “the operations of the human mind.”73 Other scientist and philosophers agreed with De Condillac and stressed that the sense of sight was “the sense of civilization.”74 Therefore the top and the bottom of the redefined hierarchy are appointed, but the senses of sound, touch, and taste, and touch are not. The sense of sound has risen in the hierarchy and has since the mastery of sight been referred to as the second sense.75 An example of this is the guided tour that was still given by the curators and later, from the beginning of the twentieth century, was also available through means of phonographic recordings to offer “contextual information.”7677 The third place on the hierarchical ladder is for the sense of touch. The privilege of handling the artefacts is only accessible for the curator. For visitors, a physical interaction was sometimes “coarsely
sensuous and vulgar,” or, as Friedrich Schiller, a German historian, poet and philosopher of the eighteenth century likes to call it, “savage.”78 Evidently, not every scholar agreed with these statements. Benedetto Varchi already stressed that the sense of touch was essential and that touch alone could make a person appreciate a sculpture.79 This shift gives a clear example of the use of the senses within the changing social etiquettes, and, as a result, how these etiquettes can influence roles and the interaction among the curator, the artefact and the visitor within a period. Artefacts have grown into a timeless state that needs to be conserved. Moreover, because of the license of possession or the notion of autonomy, the curator is the only one who comes into contact with the artworks, whilst the visitor is not in the position to interact physically with the objects. Therefore, the public experiences the largest gap between the artefact and their relationship is reduced to a minimum. They only could use their sense of sight and the guided tours given by the curators to engage with the artworks. Their museum experience in the degree of autonomy, inquisitive behavior and intimacy hardly plays a role anymore. Moreover, many scholars are still debating what the real reasons behind this sensory shift are, and how it influences the exhibition designs and museum experience today.
73 Condillac, E.B. p. xxxi. 74 Classen, C. 2005. pp. 283-284. 75 Classen, C. 2006. pp. 475-476. 76 Reden, N., 2015. p. 20. 77 Nieuwhof, A. 2017. p. 3. 78 Vicenzio Borghini, an art theorist in the sixteenth-century, referred the touching and kissing of sculptures as vulgar. See Geraldine A. Johnson. "Touch, Tactility, and the Reception of Sculpture in Early Modern Italy" in A Companion to Art Theory, P. Smith and C. Wilde, eds. (Oxford, 2002), p. 66; Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetics and Education of Man, E.M. Wilkinson and L.A. Willoughby, eds. and trans. (Oxford, 1982), p. 195. 79 Classen, C. 2007. p. 902. “Referring to a famous ancient statue known as the Hermaphrodite, Lorenzo Ghiberti commented that "there was the greatest refinement, which the eye would not have discovered, had not the hand sought it out.”
2.5 The Sensory Turn
Needless to say, is that the dominance of the sense of sight has been challenged by critics, scholars, and artists many times challenged. This questioning already started at the beginning of the epistemology shift in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Only in the late twentieth century were the absence of the other senses in museums and the academic field investigated.
The uncanonical senses, such as touch, sound and smell made their way back into exhibition designs in the 1960s. This museological turn was primarily made in the form of hands-on exhibitions.80 The field of sensory studies continued to expand and become more diverse in the following years. Especially in the 1980s and 1990s the museums and the academic field began to see the results in their own research. The work of researchers from social sciences and the humanities began to focus on the sensorium and the sensory history of our cultural life. Simultaneously to the redefining of the meaning and role of the museum, research into the human brain has increased our knowledge of the perception of experiences and cognition. These developments resulted in interdisciplinary cooperation, especially within the academic world, between cognitive researchers, (art) historians, sociologist and
anthropologist.81 Within the academic field scholars noticed that the other senses, such as touch, had been neglected. Much of the studies in this field have been done by cultural historian Constance Classen and anthropologist David Howes. With their colleague, sociologist Anthony Synnott, they kept on researching the five canonical senses.82 Another subject matter was that of the shifting epistemology hierarchy in history. In the Empire of the Senses (2005) David Howes’s anthropological approach creates a diverse interpretation of sensory experience in different time periods and cultures. Classen placed particular emphasis on the changing role of touch in the early museums and the museum experience in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century.83 In Art, Museums and Touch (2010), Fiona Candlin, Professor of Museology at the Birkbeck University of London addresses the privilege of the handling of and interaction with artworks by curators and connoisseurs that once was taken for granted. She also touches upon “the perception of neglect by examining 80 Nieuwhof, A., 2017. p. 3. 81 Levent, N. 2014. p. xiii.; 82 Ibid., pp. xvi-xvii. Levent refers to these publications; Classen, Howes, and Synnott, 1994; Bull and Back, 2003; Classen, 2005, 2012; Korsmeyer, 2005; and Edwards and Bhaumik, 2008. 83 In the article Museum Manners: The Sensory Life of the Early Museum. Journal of Social History 40 (4): 895– 914. Classen also mentions briefly the other senses and their role in the museum experience.
the sensory model formulated by Aloïs Riegl, Heinrich Wölfflin Bernard Berenson and Erwin Panofsky.”84 She takes their work chronologically and examines how they constructed the relationship between touch and vision.
Next to the academic world, the museum educators too noticed that “the role of touch in museums is seldom debated and that the value of touch and object handling in museums is little understood.” With this in mind many curators, artists, educators and many others found common ground and created interdisciplinary links.85 Art Beyond Sight (ABS, formerly Art Education for the Blind) have stimulated a dialogue between museum participants and
cognitive scientists since the establishment of the organization in 1987 by Elisabeth Axel. The primary purpose of ABS was to make museums and visual culture more accessible to the blind by developing multisensory devices, such as texture books, verbal descriptions, touching elements, and sound images. In 1996, this team also developed the first guidelines for verbal descriptions of art and artefacts in museums. Furthermore, the 1990s was the
decade in which the ABS set up a thinking tank that researched the multisensory perception of forms, audio and Arts Education utilizing the senses.86 An important partner was the
Metropolitan Museum of Art (Rebecca McGinnis), at the international conference Art Beyond Sight: Multimodal Approaches to Learning, the conference was extended to include more significant issues of multisensory learning for the entire museum public. Over the course of time, four conferences were organized, bringing together researchers and practitioners from different fields: neuroscience, social psychology, museology, education, art history, computer science, and art therapy. These developments created an environment in which artists,
museums and research laboratories for neuroscience joined forces and connect into many recent innovative partnerships. In 2010 the Walters Art Museum announced a significant collaboration with the John Hopkins University Mind/Brain Institute. In the same year, Marina Abramovic, announced during her retrospective exhibition at the New York City's Museum of Modern Art, that she was inspired to launch a project that looks at art and science from a mutual perspective. This project was to be carried out in cooperation with
neuroscientists from the New York University. 87 A growing number of museums on both
84 Candlin, F. 2010. p. 10. She stresses that “the visuals of artworks are analytically prioritized over their tangible qualities.” 85 Levent, N. 2014. p. xiii. 86 Ibid., p. xiv. 87 More detailed information about these partnerships see Levent, N. 2014.
sides of the Atlantic are sponsoring lectures and presentations on the neuroscience of sound, visual attention, learning, aesthetics, creativity and other aspects of the museum experience. The sensory turn that was created by this diverse interdisciplinary field still inspires both the academic world and museums to recall the sensuous epistemology hierarchy, resulting in further experiments with the other senses in exhibition designs. However, most exhibits are still primarily about a visual experience, meant to be viewed. Plaques of writing nearby the artefact and texts on the walls inform the public about the historical and the artistic aspects. Yet, over the past few decades, more and more galleries and museums have tried to incorporate the five human senses into their presentations. Many museums now include the visually impaired, the deaf and people with Alzheimer disease by offering special guided tours. Others move out of their comfort zone by installing “scratch-and-sniff versions” of artworks, or a smell station based besides a painting.88 However, “touch, especially, is usually relegated to particular areas, like the Louvre’s Touch Gallery, or the British Museum’s Hands On Desks. 89 For this reason, the next chapter will analyze two exhibitions that fit within these developments: The Sensorium at the Tate Britain London (2015) and #artSmellery at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2017).
88 Giaimo, Cara. n.d. ‘Why Can’t People Stop Touching Museum Exhibits?’ Atlas Obscura. Accessed 3 April 2018.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/museum-touch-exhibit-objects-multisensory.
3. TWO MULTISENSORY NARRATIVES
Since the nineteenth century, the museum has primarily been a visual experience. The hands-off policy in exhibitions has a physical distance in mind and the visitor can learn more about the artefact by reading flyers and wall texts. Despite the dominance of sight that Classen described, it was not possible to purge the museum of all the other senses. Smells always exist in every museum, for not only do artworks have smells, the restaurants and cafés too let aromas drift into the hallways.90 Likewise, sound endures in the form of guided tours given by curators or museum staff. On top of this, touch has always been around the corner. Visitors tap, lean, glide, stroke and bump the artefacts through a concealed or a “low-key unauthorized touch.”91 Perhaps a reason for people to keep touching the artefacts is to fulfil their need for inquisitive behavior and intimacy with the artworks? All these present smells, sounds and the unauthorized touches are unintentionally and unconsciously adding something to the museum experience. Interesting is that museums that intentionally incorporate the additional senses are on the rise. Curators cooperate with a diverse group of stakeholders and experts to create more and more exhibitions that address all the senses. The two exhibitions where exactly this happens are the Tate Sensorium and #ArtSmellery, which are examples of such a practice in this thesis.
Following on from the previous chapter, this chapter examines the use of the senses and its influence on the interaction of the three agents, but in the context of two contemporary multisensory exhibitions. Analysis of the two exhibitions, Tate Sensorium (2015) and
#ArtSmellery (2017), tells us more about the additional senses that are used in the curatorial strategies of these exhibitions, and additionally how the narrative and the display strategy influence each other within the exhibit. Baxandall’s theory,
represented in the triangle [Fig. 6.], and the development of the sensorial epistemology hierarchy Classen touches upon will be applied to compare the two multisensorial exhibitions. By
90 Drobnick, J. 2014. p. 183.
91 Giaimo, Cara. n.d. ‘Why Can’t People Stop Touching Museum Exhibits?’ Atlas Obscura. Accessed 3 April 2018.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/museum-touch-exhibit-objects-multisensory.
Fig. 6. Visualization inspired by M. Baxandall Exhibiting Intention (1991). Illustration: Author.
comparing the theories and the findings of the previous chapter to the execution of the
presentations, it can become clear how these display strategies work with the narrative and the interaction between the curator, artefact and the visitor. The first exhibition, Tate Sensorium at Tate Britain in London, aims to let the visitor experience artworks in an exciting way through all of the additional senses as well as sight. The second case study, #artSmellery at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, is focusing on the visitor’s sense of smell and the power of association and interpretation. The organization of this exhibition is a collaboration
between the electrical engineering company Siemens, the museum curators and a scent expert. The first paragraph outlines the character of #artSmellery and the Tate Sensorium by addressing the process of the design, the experts and the museological environment of the exhibition. Refering to Baxandall’s triangle, this section illustrates how the project leaders, the curator and the experts want to express the narrative and how this narrative is connected to different types of the museum experience.92
The second paragraph will touch upon the interactive connection between the three agents and the new determination of meaning of the object through the narrative and the used techniques in the display strategies in these presentations.
The third paragraph compares the two exhibitions to each other on the main points mentioned in the first two paragraphs. Furthermore, this paragraph also covers the
museological environment of the exhibitions and the curatorial challenges that stand out.
Fig. 9. David Bomberg. In the Hold, ca. 1913-1914 at Tate Sensorium. Tate Britain. © Tate Britain.
Fig. 10. Francis Bacon. Figure in a Landscape, 1945 at Tate Sensorium. Tate Britain. © Tate Britain.
Fig. 7. Richard Hamilton, Interior II, 1964 at Tate Sensorium. Tate Britain. © The estate of Richard Hamilton.
Fig. 8. John Latham, Full Stop, 1961 at Tate Sensorium. Tate Britain. © John Latham estate.
3.1. Representation of multisensory display strategies
3.1.1. The Tate Sensorium August 26th 2015 until October 4th 2015
The Tate Sensorium is the winner of the Tate Britain’s IK Prize 2015, an award for the best innovative idea in which the public can discover and experience the Tate Britain collection in a new way through the use of technology.93 The IK Prize was founded in 2014, and so the Tate Sensorium is just the second project that has won the award in the history of Tate Britain. Because of this, the Tate Sensorium is a project and not a temporary exhibition organized by the Tate Britain herself yet by a collaboration with the initiators The Flying Object, a creative studio in London.94
To create a profoundly sensory experience the initiators of the Flying Object teamed up with the curators from the gallery. The external sensory experts that joined the project were master chocolatier Paul A. Young, composer Nick Ryan, Lizzie Ostrom of Odette Toilette and researchers in haptic technologies from the University of Sussex.95 Their shared purpose was to create an exhibition where the visitor could experience the artworks with “all the traditional five human senses.”96 The Flying Object completely supervised the project, as well as the selection of the artworks for the Tate Sensorium, yet all the stakeholders were engaged in the process.
In six weeks, the free exhibition was accessible for four members of the public at a time. Inside the Tate Britain, one large exhibition space was reserved for the Tate Sensorium. The dedicated space was split into four theatrically lit sub-spaces, one for the entrance and the rest for each of the selected twentieth-century British paintings from Tate Britain’s collection. The chosen paintings were: Richard Hamilton, Interior II, 1964 [Fig. 7], John Latham, Full Stop,
93 For more information about the IK Prize, the projects, terms and conditions see Tate, 2018a. ‘IK Prize – Project, Terms and Conditions’. Tate. Accessed 24 April 2018a. http://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/projects/ik-prize. 94 Flying Object, 2018b. ‘Interesting Audiences’. n.d. Flying Object. Accessed 7 June 2018. https://www.weareflyingobject.com/. 95 Flying Object team consisted of Peter Law and Tom Pursey. Tony Guillan supervised the Tate Britain gallery team. Marianna Obrist led the University of Sussex. The sensory experts were Nick Ryan (sound), Odette Toilette (scent), Paul A. Young (taste), Chris O’Boyle (lighting), Annette Mees (interactive theatre) and Make Us Proud and their team (interface development). http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/art-for-the- senses. The SCHI Lab team (University of Sussex) advised on the design of the multisensory experiences (mid-air haptic technology) and evaluated the visitor’s experiences through a survey and biometric data. 96 Ablart, D. 2017. p. 1.
1961 [Fig. 8], David Bomberg, In the Hold, ca 1913-1914 [Fig. 9], and Francis Bacon, Figure in a Landscape, 1945 [Fig. 10].
In the first room, the visitors were welcomed by museum staff who introduced them to the exhibition. A wristband and headphones were handed out to “capture [the visitors’] skin conductance response, which was used to create a personalized printout at the end of the tour.”97 This is the first extra element to the museum presentation. The data these wristbands collected helped the visitors reflect on their experience in another unorthodox manner after having gone through the exhibition.
97 Ibid., p. 5. The Flying Object supervised the whole exhibition. Yet, The SCHI Lab team (University of Sussex)
advised on the design of the multisensory experiences (mid-air haptic technology) and evaluated the data on the visitor’s wristband in combination with a survey. For more information about the results see Vi, Chi Thanh. 2018.
Fig. 11. An overview with legenda of the setup of Tate
Sensorium. One room split into five sub-spaces, designed
A voice that was presented via the headphones guided the viewer through the exhibitions with instructions such as “seek your own interpretation” and, if the person should listen, taste or smell something in the room.98
The emphasis on the words “seek your own interpretation” can have various outcomes on the visitor. The viewer is stimulated to consider all the results of the different layers of the museum experience; sensory stimulation, wondering, learning, reflection, relaxation, social interaction or remembrance of pasts events. During the whole exhibition, the visitor is searching to process the experience and is aware of what he is feeling. Do I experience a sensation of wonder or relaxation or does this smell, sound or touch perhaps connect to a memory? And finally, the social interaction with other participants is part of the various outcomes that the visitor can experience.
In the second room, the painting Interior II by Richard Hamilton was presented “alongside olfactory and sound stimuli.”99 The sounds of muffled conversations and the clapping of high heels were played through four speakers. Additionally, three diffusers sprayed different scents in front of the painting. The diffusers filled the room with “spicy carnation fragrances,” aroma of cleaning products and the scent of glue.”100
Next, the group of four split up to experience John Latham’s Full Stop, and In the Hold by David Bomberg, these groups switched later on. The first two visitors were invited to
experience Lathams painting through touch and sound.101 Through tactile sensations on the palm, where the visitor could experience a “feeling of dry rain or a blow.”102 The other room visitors engaged with the painting In the Hold by David Bomberg through sound and smell. The visitors could touch, shake and smell two 3D printed rambles which unleashed the fumes of diesel and tobacco. Two sound planes divided the auditory stimuli, with one playing sharply jagged tones. Finally, in the front of the Francis Bacon’s Figure in a Landscape, the group met again. The visitors were free to experience this painting through the sense of taste, sound and smell. Through small praline chocolates in front of the painting in a bed of small chocolate bits could the viewer experience a combination of the taste and smell. The
98 Nieuwenhof, A. 2017, p. 28; Da Silva 2015. 99 Vi, Chi Thanh. 2018. p. 4. 100 Ablart, D. 2017. p. 3. 101 Chi Thanh Vi explained that this split was necessary because of the mid-air haptic technology, “which could only be used by two people at a time.” p. 4. 102 Ablart, D. 2017. p. 3.
