While visiting the St. Louis Arch (which is quite impressive) I was taken in by the spatial/visual rhetoric of the underground museum on the Westward Expansion designed by Aram Mardirosian. A 2/3s circle exhibit where the visitor can theoretically (although most, including me, seem to first work around the outer edge which depicts the chronological events of Lewis and Clark) choose where to begin and end their exploration of the museum. At the center of the circle Jefferson stands with his back to the museum entrance, peering off into the tall columns which announce different issues (Explorers, Railroads, Miners, etc.) caught up in the westward expansion, each physically placed closer to the center or further away depending on the time period. As one explores the columns, pragmatically also holding up the ceiling, and hidden cases of "artifacts" in the cut out columns, the dates, all listed on the ceiling, increase as the exhibit extends to the edge of the circle (see the easily navigable virtual tour).
I wasn't all that interested in the subject matter of the museum but the design and rhetoric of the space caught my eye and lead to dozens of photos, discussions with rangers, and the purchase of the official museum book. It goes without saying that constructed space mediates how we experience ideas, particularly shaping how we create hierarchies. It's less clear to me how quickly we can reconstruct our notion of normal and useful. My guess is that most people experience this museum as they experience traditionally sequential museums as attested to by my sister and soon-to-be brother-in-law: "I'd never thought much about the design," i.e. "you are one strange guy to take to a museum."
I'm reminded of Amy Devitt's comments at CCCC, the conference which got me to Chicago and the St. Louis,(thanks Mega for help on this) about how students utilize the rheotrical moves of written genres, whether they are appropriate or not, they learned in high school when confronted with new writing situations. Templates, or genres, help us navigate and make sense of new genres or new spaces, like this less rigid, less chronological museum. But, of course, the old genre can also restrict our ability to fully engage with the new design: "So, where's the beginning?" Maybe it's only possible (and I'm stealing from Mega here) to fully experience new genres of texts and space through repeated experience and sustained effort. That is it's too much to ask someone to get it on the first or second or third try. The rewiring, reconnecting, and recombining takes time. Not out with the old as the mantra but reconfiguring and utilizing the old to contruct a new whole.
It's great to be wanna be rhetorician--life is all the more interesting.
4 comments:
I'm fascinated by how architecture structures our experiences. In museums, especially, space is an aesthetic experience. Which is strange, of course, when I consider the Guggenheim www.guggenheim.org/the_building.html. It's a beautiful building, but not a great place to see art. I hate how the spiraling staircase forces me to view art in a linear fashion, first one, then the next. It's a hierarchy of sorts.
I loved the museum in Philadelphia. They purposely put the Duchamp in a room at the end of a wing. The wing is chronological. By the time you get to the Duchamp, you have to have passed by Monet, Pollack, Brancusi. By the time I got to the Duchamp, I was underwhelmed. Most people go to Philly to see the Duchamp. But they have so many amazing things to see on the way. I still love Duchamp, but in context (both spatially and temporally) not as impressive.
An alternative claim: Genres (or templates, or pick your term) don't restrict you ability to experience; they make it available. I'm still catching up on my genre theory. I wish I could have attended that session with Devitt.
I would agree that genres make available experience but I would also contend that anything which allows for experience must necessarily limit experience. By its very nature a genre or template organizes reality in a way which is useful but only partially reflective of "true" reality. It's a necessary move but also, for me, necessarily limiting.
That's interesting, Ron. I made an observation recently that whenever I travel for any extended period of time I seem to become less creative. I'm wondering now if that doesn't have something to do with what you're talking about. Maybe I need some time to, as you say, reconfigure and utilize the old to construct the new (new experiences, etc.)--an incubation period of sorts.
Food for thought, anyway.
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