Spaces of Experience: Art Gallery Interiors from 1800 to 2000 - Hardcover

Charlotte Klonk

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300151969 ISBN 13: 9780300151961

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2009

Synopsis

This fascinating study of art gallery interiors examines the changing ideals and practices of galleries in Europe and North America from the eighteenth to the late twentieth century. It offers a detailed account of the different displays that have been created - the colors of the background walls, lighting, furnishings, the height and density of the art works on show - and it traces the different scientific, political and commercial influences that lay behind their development. Charlotte Klonk shows that scientists like Hermann von Helmholtz and Wilhelm Wundt advanced theories of perception that played a significant role in justifying new modes of exhibiting. Equally important for the changing modes of exhibition in art galleries was what Michael Baxandall has called 'the period eye', a way of seeing informed by the impact of new fashions in interior decoration and by department store and shop window displays. The history of museum interiors, she argues, should be appreciated as a revealing chapter in the broader history of experience.

About this title

Review:

`[An] engaging study.'
--Brian Sholis, Frieze, 1st November 2009

About the Author:

Charlotte Klonk teaches art history at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She is the author of 'Science and the Perception of Nature' and co-author of 'Art History: A Critical Introduction to its Methods'.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0300151969
• ISBN 13: 9780300151961
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 244