Hi everyone, 
Decoding Exhibitions
The history and contemporary study of exhibitions is still relatively new, at least as a formal discipline, or sub-set of art history. However, many of the periods in art history are taught through a curriculum that uses exhibitions as a way to look at how art has shifted over generations. Exhibitions become key moments in art historical narratives. One of the key differentiators between how exhibitions are taught in art history courses and in programs that study exhibition history is that those focused primarily on exhibitions examine the essential tools, decisions, settings, and styles that exhibitions take shape through -- breaking them down analytically and critically.
Questions like: What were the didactic materials like (brochures, wall text, audio tour, etc)? Or were there any didactics at all? Was the work presented on pedestals, on the floor, wall or from the ceiling? What deliberate choices might the curator have made about displaying the works that differ from the assumptions we can make based on what the work is? For example, a painting hangs on a wall or a film is played in a dark space with plush seating and a theater like environment. How did the layout, order of the works, tone of the text, and even the lighting or inclusion of supplementary materials such as posters, tools, etc, change the way the art was engaged with, or read?
The list goes on, but rather than walking into an exhibition and taking the general white-cube form we see most often for granted as a constant or as the way it's always been, I'd like to emphasize that we break down style, the same way one breaks down the style of a painting? I realize there are a few implications to this proposition that even I don't like, but bear with me along the way so we can really get into exhibitions and what they mean!
Resources
The primary reasons for this post are first to shift the frame (above) from art, just for a bit, to how art is framed. The second reason is to give you a sense of what someone like me reads (or tries to) read regularly, and what publications, websites, and programs do an excellent job of covering, framing, and at times specifically building the history of exhibitions.
The Exhibitionist is a publication and an ongoing blog that studies exhibitions, gathering writing from curators, academics, critics, and at times artists. The project continues on and has recently published an anthology of the first 12 issues of the magazine.
Mousse is an Italian publication that also published books, anthologies, and has a great website. They cover anything and everything contemporary art including exhibition reviews, books, artist interviews, openings, new projects, etc.
Most importantly though, for our studies here is that Mousse published an amazing series of articles about the history of the artist as curator. The series was written by a collection of great contemporary art curators and writers who each studied one artist curated exhibition in depth and wrote a long form essay about it. It's a fascinating look into a very specific and often unheralded history.
Our most important texts are Bruce Altshuler's excellent and at the time of publication groundbreaking books: Salon to Biennial: Exhibitions that Made Art History - Volume I: 1863-1959 & Biennials and Beyond: Exhibitions That Made Art History - 1962 - 2002
I was first introduced to these compendiums during my first year of graduate school at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. This was a bit of a bible for us as my 13 classmates and I embarked through the history of the exhibition as a first and perhaps most important course in our 2 year Masters in Curatorial Practice Program.
One last resource to think about is the more and more common (woohoo!) Exhibition History Archive that Museums and Exhibiting Institutions of all sizes, missions, and locations post to their websites. As it is in many things the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is a leader in providing a robust and interestingly framed archive of their nearly 100 year history of exhibitions, that includes over 3,000 projects: See MoMA's archive.
So, with these few more tools and resources, we are better prepared to think critically, creatively, and historically about exhibitions!
Remember to stay with me as we dig deep into the archive and history of the Exhibition.