The semester is over!

Hooray! I just finished my paper for the seminar I attended this semester. I still need to edit it, but here's the introduction and the conclusion:"Museum exhibitions of contemporary art have recently expanded their foothold in the cultural landscape. From quilts created in the deepest corners of the American South to high-tech video karaoke pods designed in South Korea to giant chalkboards partially erased by an artist’s hand to a late-career retrospective of an important German painter, exhibitions and museum spaces are proliferating. There is much to the encounter between an individual and work of art in a gallery setting. An average museum visitor imagines their experiences as minimally mediated, believing in the primacy of the artist’s hand and the purity of an object’s representation in a museum, yet there is an expansive field of hidden actions that occur across time and space to bring visitor and object together. It is important to establish the agents who are active in this field and then to fill in the space between them, creating a network of connections through which one passes toward the understanding of an exhibition.A traditional conception of the encounter -- partially influenced by the ‘empty’ nature of the ‘white cube’ gallery setting -- involves two participants: the artist who created the object and the viewer who observes it. Let me immediately complicate this assumption by adding an intermediary participant: the exhibition curator. The line that connected the artist to the observer is now a triangular plane, and the events that precipitate the encounter – both outside and inside the museum – can be caught in its surface. Using a richly detailed conception of the public derived from Michael Warner’s titular essay in Publics and Counterpublics and examples from recent exhibitions at museums on the east coast of the United States, the highly active nature of this plane becomes evident."(insert about five thousand words)"It is natural for one to draw a highly subjective path through the terrain of contemporary art exhibitions and the actors in the discursive field that creates them. While that is undoubtedly important in creating a second layer of discourse that can be said to surround museum culture as a whole, it remains important to acknowledge the presence of mediating factors before, during, and after an encounter with a work of art. This recognition yields important opportunities for reflection and engagement on multiple levels with a specific exhibition. Taking this knowledge in hand, our participation as members of the museum public can become more directly engaged with the future direction of museum exhibitions as a whole. Not only does the museum shape the audience, but the audience has the power to shape the museum. To quote art historian and independent curator Hans Belting: 'Mobilizing a critical public within the rooms of the museum is a long overdue activity... have we thought enough about the museum as a medium? It is the medium of our usage.'" Phew.. I'm glad I took the course, glad to be done, and glad that I can now move on to other projects. I hope everyone is having a nice weekend.