Suspended: Art in the threshold
- Submitting institution
-
The University of Westminster
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- q4744
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
-
-
- Book title
- Museum Thresholds: The Design and Media of Arrival
- Publisher
- Routledge
- ISBN
- 9781138646032
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- May
- Year of publication
- 2018
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Ride’s book chapter offers a new approach to understanding how the artwork at the threshold of a museum affects the visitor experience. Its analysis builds upon knowledge gained through research conducted as part of an AHRC Network award “Transforming Thresholds: Digital Media and Visitor Behaviour in Museum Foyers” (2012-14). Ride analyses carefully chosen case-studies to assess examples of artwork in museum thresholds in five countries. Conducted over a three-year period, his research method included interviews with curators, museum designers and artists, and small-scale qualitative evaluation of visitor engagement.
The chapter argues that artworks at the threshold operate as a framing device or para-text, and convey complex information to the visitor about way the museum will enable them to engage with its cultural content. Building on theories about the threshold experience (Gurian 2006), Ride shows how artworks presented in the foyer or entry point of a museum can represent the museum’s identity and its values to the visitor at the point when the visitor is determining how to engage with the organisation. The research shows how artwork at the threshold is rarely curated in the same way as in-gallery spaces, but is crucial to visitors in terms of conceptual and social orientation.
Several publications have dealt with creative artwork as an intervention within museum galleries (Putnam 2009; Sheehy 2006), others deal with the communicative function of architecture of the museum including museum lobbies (McLeod 2007, Mortensen, et al 2014), and they extensively address visitor experience (Bitgood 2006; Falk 2010). None to date show how threshold artwork operates in conjunction with spatial engagement through architecture, the conceptual and aesthetic engagement properties of art and thereby impact on the visitor experience. Ride’s research therefore contributes to the crucial debates about making museums more publicly accessible and reducing intellectual and cultural barriers to engagement.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
