33327830

Critical Appraisal: Sculpture in the City 2013 & Museology

I find nothing more contemplative than walking in open air, its infinite condition,
the freedom, even in the constraints of a destination, it allows the mind a sense
of simultaneous uncertainty & self-awareness. The long, bustling approach to
Sculpture in the City 2013 allows me this, a ponderous moment of clarity. I
question what compelled me to attend this at all, is museological deliberation
even plausible? On paper, it appears much an echo of a sculpture garden for the
inner-city, it has no obvious museological pre-tense or intention however, it gives
me the niggling expectation it could push the probabilities of how museology is
applied & interacted with our contemporary situation.

Everyday examples of museology are most noticeably found in our museums,

now spread worldwide, our old-set Eurocentric institutions of authority &
experience incarcerate wears in buildings full of grandeur and Greco-Roman
ideological architecture. These hold dear the static museological set-ups that
have maintained a monopoly of record, display & exclusion of socio-historical
object & fact in our national & international memory, that hold in contempt the
institutional professionals & academics that without the presence &
centralisation of their temples1, would have a conflict of authority with the
breadth of society and a narrow field of knowledge concerning their own craft.
The Eurocentric birth of these institutions coincides with the development of the
modern city in a colonizing world, creating places of reflection & learning, of
collection, preservation & presentation of human historical importance and
curiosity to the public2. Development in the presentations & philosophies of
these monoliths on the surface is a positive embrace of new methods and
change, such as technological interaction & integration, however followers of the
profession find it less than ground-breaking, a faade over the almost unchanged

1 As considered in secular ritual interpretations from Carol Duncan, The Art

Museum as Ritual in The Art of Art History ed. Donald Preziosi, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2009, whereby the institution systems we naturally adhere to
link to the ritualistic procedures of religion both past and present.

2 Commonly the visitors would have been of the upper classes: educated,
affluent & with the recreational time to do so. The modern publics of these
institutions are vastly more diverse by comparison, appealing to foreign
curiosity, however it is forever arguable that the majority of visitors still situate
themselves in the upper & middle classes with the lifestyle to accommodate.
 33327830

values and missions, a fall into a capitalized focus where vying with each other
over the size of their budgets & endowments, complete with power point is the
forthcoming discussion. Writer Donald Preziosi in fact expressed everything of
significance to museology has already been said 3 purely due to the
disheartening discussion of these institutional individuals. Nonetheless, The
Sculpture in the Citys discussion of plausibility gathers traction in light of this, it
either stands as having one of the most ambitious facades of museological static
development or as I hope to discover, a movement towards a development in the
use of museology. Still we must actively establish what we mean by museology &
how it differs from the museum so as to understand Sculpture in the Citys
inclusion into the field, the changes and similarities that already exist, possibly
not even just in our open example, but in other plausibilities of public & even
private space.

The museum itself is really nothing more than the physical entity, a titled
location to facilitate the intentions of the museological process. David Dean, as
part of the glossary for his 1994 book Museum Exhibition Practice4 considers it a
dwelling for the muses - a place of study, reflection and learning which
dedicates to a physical presence for the objects and ideas of the liberal arts, the
philosophies & theoretical concepts of the institutions can actually be attributed
to their museology, or at the very least, are not fixed to the museum as a single
entity, in fact the institution is known traditionally to struggle with conflicting
interests of scholarship, conservation and education (that in todays set-up has
critically become understood as its entertainment role), were as museology
equally encompasses all. Preziosi expresses in his writings concerning museum
development its future continues to be conceived almost exclusively in an
instrumental manner as technically more refined versions of public
edutainment & infotainment5. His less than positive evaluation concretes at

3 Donald Preziosi, Philosophy and the End of Museums in Museum Philosophy

for the Twenty-first century, ed. Hugh H. Genoways, Oxford: AltaMira Press, 2006
(pg69) based on attending The Future of Art conference.

4 David Dean, Museum Exhibition Practice. London: Routledge, 1994.

5 Donald Preziosi, Philosophy and the End of Museums in Museum Philosophy

for the Twenty-first century, ed. Hugh H. Genoways, Oxford: AltaMira Press, 2006
(pg70)
 33327830

least todays museums in a very facilitative role, presenting a contemporary

imbalance towards entertainment value. This situation cannot be considered all
bad however, the institution is working within an environment that requires it to
consider the implications of funding, awareness, purpose and hence it needs to
encourage public interest within a society with changed values as well as its own
need to self-sustain rather than support. The entertainment of museums comes
in some sense from its ease of use, classifying and labelling to make it
understandable. The museum here has already acted in producing a conscripted
chronology or otherwise systematic form for its public consumer, forming a
limited, lazy absorption rather than a discovery of knowledge. This system of
breaking up into the clearest chunks is a part of the active process of museology
in these institutions, however the museums museological form differs from
museology as a whole. The overall concept doesnt require order or clarification,
it can be conceived in a chaos, developed by the individual out of fragments,
producing more personal understandings, from a point in their own knowledge so
as to develop, connect and expand. The idea of a system of chaos was first
brought to my attention by the writings of The Delirious Museum by Calum
Storrie and not only stands as a strong representative of the broader range of
museology but also the museological application in Sculpture in the City. A state
of chaos, can up-end perceived notions of the museum. Messiness, category
confusion, theatricality, elaborate historical layering and museological
fictionalizing6 can otherwise allow for an endless possibility of interpretation and
interaction of the individual, engaged or wandering viewer. Sculpture in the City
does have a prescribed order but only to those who find and utilise the
numbered maps provided for all the included works, but even with this system
(of which very few works actively advocate), the structure is not guaranteed,
especially for those of a more wanderous nature. Logistically it hasnt the
ordered constraint of archways and corridors of the physical museum, the
structure is free as the streets of its EC8 postcode, there is no boundary between
what is show and what is city, one work and the next, the unstructured
distributional space style offset by the highly structured directed/suggested set
up of the streets primary function7 keeps you to the conventions of the city, not
the museum, hence the experience of museology expected here has to different

6 Calum Storrie, The Delirious Museum: A Journey from the Louvre to Las Vegas.
London: I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd, 2006 (pg3)
 33327830

to that of the museum and it leads to thinking the city element of this show may
have greater link to the independence of museology than first anticipated.

The physical elements of museum museology are incredibly important to a lot

of viewers, Didier Maleuvre for example in his defensive writings on the current
institution, praises the aim at creating the optimal conditions for viewing of
art8, which is to say silence, calm, minimal incursion, white spaces and natural
tones but what is to say these are optimal? The museums archaically
monopolous convention of museology arguably isnt maintained successfully
today anyway (especially during the school holidays), the museum system
commonly flattening & institutionally bending the experience to suit reactionary
thinking, classical idea and more commonly, political emphasis. Museology and
the urban space is of concern to writers such as Maleuvre whereby to turn art
loose into the street it will likely flounder in the noise and distraction of
modern life. No artwork, however compelling, stands a chance next to the giant,
digital glitz of Times Square9, and its no falsification that some urban
environments would swamp the aesthetics of works & ideas, nevertheless
Sculpture in the City is a considered creation of museology, not a loose turn
out on the street, with six galleries10 working in its production in partnership with
artists11. Time Square itself could be considered, under the thoughts of Storrie, as
much of an object of the wider Delirious Museum of the city as the ancient vase
of the enclosed collection. It best serves in its current context, and the
separation of museology into the open city space allows these objects of present
7 David Dean, Museum Exhibition Theory and Practice London: Routledge, 1994.
(Pg32-66)

8 Didier Maleuvre A Plea for Silence: Putting Art Back into the Museum in
Museum Philosophy for the 21st Century ed. Hugh H. Genoways. Oxford: AltaMira
Press, 2006. (pg165)

9 Didier Maleuvre A Plea for Silence: Putting Art Back into the Museum in
Museum Philosophy for the 21st Century ed. Hugh H. Genoways. Oxford: AltaMira
Press, 2006. (pg166)

10 The Pace Gallery, Sadie Coles, Waddington Custol, Boghossian Foundation,

White Cube, Lisson Gallery.

11 Antony Gormley, Petroc Sesti, Richard Wentworth, Robert Indiana, Jim Lambie,
Shirazeh Ryan Gander, Keith Coventry and the Chapman Brothers.
 33327830

history to be considered on the same level of conservation, reflection, thought

and edutainment as any other of age. The museology of Sculpture in the City, in
much the same way, incorporating into its record, the ever-changing skyscraper
heritage that is developing in the financial district, and even on an aesthetic and
ambient level there are advances & parallels we can draw across from the
handling of works in the white cube environment. Though not silent, the city
ambiance can give equal ease to clarity of thought and respect for work,
artworks are made in these ambiances, people view work in hectic galleries,
crowded pubs and school classrooms all the time, hence museology for these
environments is ingrained with the occurrence of background and confident in
the conscious or unconscious retention and interest of the viewer in the object.
The city-thick surroundings, should in Maleuvre thinking, hinder the constant and
increased isolation intended for appreciation and positive contemplation, a let
the work of art speak directly to you with a minimum of interference 12 mentality,
however elements such as the colouration of the local architecture mirrors that
similarly seen in both the artworks on display as well as the common neutrals &
white-to-black colour schemes we see in conventional museum shows 13. There
appears very little of actual distraction in this show other than the people
watching and peripheral what was that? that is just as common in the museum
space, the fact that this show has looked to push museology into other expanses
and forms gives just cause for attribution to the field, as a show of greater
understanding to the reception of information, self-reflection and idea by a
broader public today.

The subtlety of the aesthetic similarity and interconnection works to advance

the interpretation of the artworks displayed, works chosen from their social
histories, for their relation to the city however, it also to a certain extent
demonstrates the shows lingering institutional connection with identification of
an ideal frame. The frame, as expressed by Daniel Buren, considers a number
of works of art exist only because the location in which they are seen 14, found
object a common example, and I find many of the works including Petroc Sestis
Time Fold stand to be interpreted & self-reflecting in a totally different light in the

12 Donald Preziosi Epilogue: The Art of Art History in The Art of Art History ed.
Donald Preziosi Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. (pg494)

13 As example, Tate Modern presented the works of Paul Klee using flush black,
white & grey aesthetics alternating depending on intended focus.
 33327830

textured frame. This interrelation takes the whole environment as frame and
accepts a stronger role in delivering some of the principle points of the
museology; whereby it delivers the purpose of enjoyment and self-reflection,
open to a wide as well as local public, giving people the means through material
evidence to reflect upon themselves, their present placement socially and
geographically and their society in general under a greater influence of the artist
rather than guidance of the constricting system of the institution.

In fact Sculpture in the Citys lack of guidance leads to a greater freedom in the
independence of thought, no matter your body of knowledge as a public
member, which I consider a great advance in the reception of histories as true
self-reflections. Even Maleuvre, who in most part would be against this, identifies
issues with the constant signposting, information boards & audio in todays
museums. He expresses that no art seeing goes absolutely free of cultural
mediation. However, presentation loaded with explanations may end up eclipsing
where it seeks to highlight15. Sculpture in the City moves forward from this
prescriptive impact on interpretive freedom, the mediation of the museum &
gallery stops at the choice of location and object, the provided plaques give you
no more than biographic re-enforcement and a minimal foundation so as to do
your own exploration. This is on the presumption that you chose to interact with
the information in a standard format, the environment does allow you to
completely disregard the entirety of information leaving it to be interpretive and
reflective in its freest form. This self-movement to discover and identify is key to
how a vast majority of artworks where intended, or at least are accepted to be,
and turns the focus back on the work not onto purely the time they came from.
In fact some writers like Andr Breton could not help losing the sense of the part
(he) was playing. The enchantments that the street outside had to offer [him]
were a thousand times more real16. It stands to me that the development in

14 Daniel Buren, Beware in Art in Theory 1900-2000 ed. Charles Harrison & Paul
Wood Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003. (Pg866)

15 Didier Maleuvre, A Plea for Silence: Putting Art Back into the Art Museum in Museum
Philosophy for the 21st century ed. Hugh H. Genoways Oxford: AltaMira Press,
2006. (pg172)

16 Andre Breton, Surrealism and Painting in Art in Theory 1900-2000 ed. Charles
Harrison & Paul Wood, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003. (Pg458)
 33327830

museology comes from a division of tools not a pure prescription of knowledge.

With the modern day anywhere connection to information we have, the
centralisation need no longer be pinned upon a physical location, hence
Sculpture in the Citys inclusion into the museological field is based on its
progression from the constriction, whereby it pushes to develop a sharply
personal quality of experience, of perception, of emphatic attunement for fine
shades all things which one gets from practise, not receiving them.17

It is unlikely that the show alone stands to be convincingly a replacement for

the museum we understand nevertheless, Sculpture in the City brings forward
potential for providing its works with a platform that has moved on from the
confines of the typical cube and the otherwise narrow conscription of museum
chronology, allowing the connection of a recent social history, to culminate and
communicate with past histories and artwork contexts. Yet, one last museological
convention - conservation therefore comes into question, with the removal of any
structural element of surrounding space we are left debating the implications of
the void on the systems of protection and perpetual life for collections of socio-
historical object. Museology itself acts to conserve but not just the physical
objects, its also the thoughts & the interactions, with not just past history but
present history, something the closed internal space can struggle to keep up and
communicate. This is why even in conclusion of the attribution to the field, this
show and future developments that its blueprint can bring, would be in tandem
with the conventional museum, be it in its current independent form or of a
developed state such as the increasing move to university linked institutions. In
my final thoughts on the show I am left considering the implications of Sculpture
in the City 2013, to what extremes of public space museology can it be taken to?
How can advancing technologies aid or leap-frog the developments? And can it
really spark a development to prevent a perpetually stunted system of
museology in tomorrows world?

17 Didier Maleuvre, A Plea for Silence: Putting Art Back into the Art Museum in Museum
Philosophy for the 21st century ed. Hugh H. Genoways Oxford: AltaMira Press,
2006 (pg172)
 33327830

Bibliography
Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. "The System of Collecting." In The Cultures of Collecting ,
7 - 24. London: Reaktion Books Ltd.

Breton, Andre. 2003. "Surrealism and Painting." In Art in Theory 1900-2000 , 457-
463. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Buren, Daniel. 2003. "Beware." In Art in Theory 1900-2000, 861-867. Oxford :

Blackwell Publications.

Dean, David. 1994. Museum Exhibition Theory & Practice. London: Routledge.

Duncan, Carol. 1995. "Tha Art Museum as Ritual." In The Art of Art History, edited
by Donald Prezioni, 424-434. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Goodman, Nelson. 1985. The End of the Museum? Illinois: University of Illinois
Press.

Guttuso, Renato. 2003. "Crisis of Renewl ." In Art in Theory 1900-2000, 646, 647.
Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Haacke, Han. 2003. "Statement." In Art in Theory 1900-2000, 930-931. Oxford :

Blackwell Publishing .

Hein, Hilde S. 2006. Public Art: Thinking Museums Differently . Oxford: AltaMira
Press.
 33327830

Kaprow, Allan. 2003. "Assemblages, Enviroments and Happenings." In Art in

Theory 1900-2000, edited by Charles Harrison & Paul Wood, 717-722.
Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Maleuvre, Didier. 2006. "A Plea for Silence: Putting Art Back into the Art
Museum." In Museum Philosophy for the 21st Centruy , edited by Hugh H
Genoways, 165 - 176. Oxford: Alta Mira Press.

Malraux, Andre. 1965. Le Muse Imaginaire . France .

Maroevic, Ivo. 1997. "Museology in the Future World ." Edited by Zbynek Z
Stransky. Museology of Tomorrows World: Proceding fo the International
Symposium held at the University Brno Oct 9-11 1996. Germany. 21-30.

Prezioni, Donald. 1998. "Epilogue: The Art of Art History." In The Art of Art
History, edited by Donald Prezioni, 488-503. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

Preziosi, Donald. 2006. "Philosophy and the Ends of the Museum." In Museum
Philosophy of the 21st Century, edited by Hugh H Genoways, 69-79.
Oxford: Alta Mira Press.

Preziosi, Donald, and Claire Farago. 2012. Art Is Not What Tou Think It Is.
Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons Ltd).

Robinson, Franklin W. 2006. "Learning by Looking: The Future of Museums." In

Museum Philosophy in the 21st Century, edited by Hugh H. Genoways,
161-164. Oxford: Alta Mira Press.

Smithson, Robert. n.d. Robert Smithson Essays . Accessed April 4, 2014.

http://www.robertsmithson.com/essays/void.htm.

Storrie, Calum. 2006. The Delirous Museum: A Journey from the Leuvre to Las
Vagas . London: I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd.