Exhibitions and Design: A Perspective on the Project of Museum Display
By Francensca Lanz and Jacopo Leveratto
In this chapter, we bring museum display into sharp focus through the lens of exhibition design, meaning those aspects of the project of a museum primarily related to the setup of its display in the museum spaces. The chapter works through the discussion of two key theoretical monographs on the subject, namely Mostrare: L’Allestimento in Italia dagli Anni Venti agli Anni Ottanta [trans: Exhibiting: Exhibition Design in Italy from the Twenties to the Eighties] by Sergio Polano (1988) and Narrative Spaces: On the Art of Exhibiting by Herman Kossmann (2012). They serve as emblematic examples of two different ways of understanding display through interior architecture and exhibition design, setting the ground for our argument about the critical autonomy of exhibition design as a designerly interpretive act within the museum. While acknowledging the nowadays widely recognized important role of interior architecture and exhibition design in determining not only how a display looks and feels but also what it means, this chapter discusses the relationship between the curatorial project of museum display and its exhibition design. In doing so, this chapter provides the reader with stimuli and suggestions from the field of exhibition design that may be useful for developing a more sophisticated and nuanced analysis of displays that is able to account for the key role of the designer as a critical thinker.
About the Authors
Francesca Lanz, PhD, MS Arch, is Assistant Professor of Interior Architecture at Northumbria University, UK. Her academic expertise lies at the intersection of interior architecture, museum and exhibition design, to museum and heritage studies. Her research develops across these fields notably revolving around the role of the built environment and museums in contemporary societies, with key attention to neglected heritages and difficult memories and stories. Since 2010 she has been teaching and researching these topics at different European Universities, developing a rich portfolio of funded research projects and scholarly publications in international academic journals and edited volumes.
Jacopo Leveratto, PhD, MS Arch, is a Lecturer of Interior Architecture and Exhibition Design at Politecnico di Milano, and he is national Principal Investigator of the HERA research project En/counter/points: (re)negotiating belonging through culture and contact in public space and place, which will run from 2019 to 2022. He has authored numerous publications in peer-reviewed international journals and edited volumes. He is also a Correspondent for Op.Cit., the Italian Review of Art Criticism, and the Associate Editor of the peer-reviewed journals International Journal of Interior Architecture and Spatial Design, and ARK.
“Today, the great majority of art museums currently tend to work with temporary events. However, looking at exhibition design critically—as if it were a form of artistic practice—can still say a lot about the role museums intend to play. By unveiling how certain displays, in their material form, materialize nondiscursive pedagogic programs or political positions, the visitor gains deeper insights into the museum’s mission.”
Lanz and Leveratto, 2022, p.79