In this decade alone, several engaging and provocative exhibits with a global dimension have been staged within art museums: Massive Change at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Sanctuary: The Project at the Museum of Modern Art in Glasgow; Global Cities at the Tate Modern in London; and the most recent, Design and the Elastic Mind at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. These sensory-rich environments reflect a highly modernist graphic interpretation of ideas, at times resembling a three-dimensional website rather than the evocative atmosphere of reflection and expression generally expected within the traditional ‘white box’ art museum. Art museums have had to reinvent and reinvigorate themselves in order to attract visitors and survive. Creating spectacle has become an inherent part of the exhibition designer’s repertoire but there has also been a need to reconnect with the visitor and to design more meaningful exhibitions. This refocussing of collections and the inclusion of exhibits with a global dimension are on the rise. Reaching new visitors, especially the significant Millennial generation (aka Millennials) has rendered many directors and curators experts in youth relations and pop culture attraction. The interest in the Millennials, compounded by their numbers, is due to this generation’s skewed view of culture, mass media and celebrity influences. It needs to be reintroduced to the art community. Millennials have a great interest in social engagement, as ‘those who will inherit the earth’. They are considered the most globally aware generation in years in terms of politics, environment and social issues. In times like these, where environmental, political and social issues proliferate, the desire to examine alternative approaches and viewpoints has grown. Globalisation within our lives has contributed to our thirst for these innovative perspectives, globally and locally. The contextualization and commodification of knowledge has become the motivation for designers, artists and visionaries from all fields to express original solutions to these global issues. And as such, contemporary art museums as purveyors of original, innovative expression can respond as culturally enriching contributors to otherwise sombre debates. Congruently, as a society comforted by the increase of rapid visual cues within television, advertising and virtual games, the attention span of a typical modern museum visitor has shortened and is no longer responsive to the lengthy interpretive exhibits of the past. Modern exhibits veer away from linear narratives, the single storyline which must be adhered to; instead multi-thread stories are assembled within distinct information pockets, as chapters in a spatial book. Layered information in a visceral montage of imagery and text guide visitors to their next information interaction. The multi-dimensional attempts of conveyance are subject to interpretation by all. Artist interpretations and installations further disseminate the issues in virtual and real methodologies of exhibition. The dialogues that these exhibits elevate within the cultural milieu of an art museum reveal the communication of art and science occurring within generations and mediums. As witnessed by the crowds visiting Design and the Elastic Mind at the MoMA, the critical accolades for its content and its visionary curator within design and art magazines to science and technology magazines and ultimately its success as an ongoing web-based expression, no longer is the ‘exhibition- as-spectacle’ that of a King Tut blockbuster from bygone decades, but that of visionary experience that connects with its visitors within the real and virtual realms. Interdisciplinary expression within the art museum permits diversity and unity to exist and flourish as human expression of knowledge through artistic and scientific endeavors seep into public consciousness. ~
opposit: Global Cities, Tate Modern, London above: Wealth and Politics, Massive Change, Vancouver Art Gallery.
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archives and museums: On Site review 20
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