Art has travelled a long way to be featured in art galleries and museums. Art used to be considered private property. It was even considered sacred–something to be cherished and protected in back rooms of churches or hung on the walls to represent deities. The modern perspective on art is that it is for public viewing. Enter the museums. Art objects are still elevated above ordinary objects, however, even when they originate as an ordinary thing. Consider Duchamp’s “Fountain.” This is where display and discourse come in.

In her article “Discourse and Display: The Modern Eye, Entrepreneurship, and the Cultural Transformation of the Patchwork Quilt,” Karin Peterson outlines how presenting an object in a modern manner, with accompanying text, can change the way it is perceived. While her discussion related to patchwork quilts, the methods are equally relevant to textiles and ceramics since both are more commonly considered the domains of artisans and craftsmen since so many of the products have a utilitarian function.

Peterson details how two art connoisseurs “sought to minimize the traditional connotations of quilts while emphasizing visual qualities that match “high art” works, [which] suggests that although some “minor” arts (ceramics, fibers, glass, wood, other “folk” and “ethnic” arts) now have a presence in the fine art world, the terms of that presence seem to require, at least initially, a rejection of other kinds of cultural contexts and, by extension, people who make an appropriate cultural objects in ways that do not solely rely on dominant aesthetics.

So how would the public expect an object to be displayed if they were meant to think of it as art? Peterson emphasizes formalism, defining it as “the theory that the proper way to look at a work of art is in terms of its formal qualities, that is, line, shape, and color. This perspective claims that all works of art can be evaluated solely on the basis of the visual experience and rejects the notion that subject matter, or the viewer’s own life context, should interfere with appreciation of the visual qualities of a work.”

Galleries attempt to display art works in a pristine and non-distracting environment consisting of neutral walls, open spaces so the work can be inspected at a distance or up close, two-dimensional works are framed and sculptures may be viewed in the round. This prioritizes the design of the art object by removing any context. Supplementing the work with an artist statement can provide insight into the process and the vision of the artist. When I display my art in the cabinet at Scarfe, I will follow the same principle. I need to consider the individual display of each item and how it relates to its neighbours, and to construct careful statements that add to understanding rather than simply describing what is there.

Karin Elizabeth Peterson, “Discourse and Display: The Modern Eye, Entrepreneurship, and the Cultural Transformation of the Patchwork Quilt,” Sociological Perspectives. Volume: 46 issue: 4, page(s): 461-490
Issue published: December 1, 2003.

https://doi.org/10.1525/sop.2003.46.4.461