The Exhibition as a Form of Architecture Practice (Abstract)

The Exhibition as a Form of Architecture Practice - New York City in the 1980s

This paper was written in 2015 for the discipline "Colloquium I," instructed by Mark Wasiuta, as part of the core courses of my master's degree in Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture at Columbia University in New York.

Guided by questions concerning the growing number of architecture and design biennials in past decades, this research sought to look at the history of architecture exhibitions in New York. It investigated the introduction of architecture in exhibitions and installations in alternative art spaces, galleries, organizations, and museums in the 1980s and the creation of spaces focused on examining and debating the discipline. The study also reflected on how architecture was treated as the subject of an exhibition in this period, looking at the multiple connections between artists and architects and how they inspired each other on projects where these two figures worked together.

This study created an atlas of architecture exhibitions and organizations in this decade. It also researched a selection of projects, focusing its analysis on Diller Scofidio's "Parasite," presented at MoMA in 1989.

Excerpts of the text can be found below:

Part 1:

Initially concerned with the growing number of architecture and design biennials in the last decades, this research wondered about the history of architecture exhibitions and the increase in its appreciation. What reasons have made architecture more and more prominent in museums and galleries? Reflecting on these questions, this research decided to examine the context of the city of New York.

New York is not just renowned for its diverse and outstanding exhibitions, but the city is notable for the creation of the first curatorial department of architecture and design by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1932. Supported by the principle that these two fields are connected to the artistic practice, this initiative not only made it possible for them to enter the museum’s collection but also engaged them in debate with a wide audience in lectures, projects, installations, and exhibitions. Therefore, architecture not only became a research subject but also started to have its own exhibition space, ensuring its constant revision and aperture to new perceptions.

In the following decades, the exhibitions presented in MoMA impelled other institutions to present architecture shows, including commercial galleries. Also, the contact between architects and artists compelled architecture to enter artistic studios and non-profit organizations.

Regarding the period, some initial reasons have taken this study to the 1980s, like the creation of Storefront in 1982, an important space for art, architecture, and design; eminent shows like “Deconstructivist Architecture” (1988) that brought the attention of a diverse public to the architecture discussion; many shows – in the majority solo shows – in display in commercial galleries, like Max Protetch and Leo Castelli; architects not just presenting their works in artistic organizations, but organizing their and others shows.

In an article from 1982, Paul Goldberger confirms the early assumptions: “The Metropolitan and the Modern will not be alone in mounting architectural exhibitions this season; as in the past few years, the growth in architectural shows has been enormous, both in commercial galleries and institutions. Such exhibitions can involve sketches and models for buildings yet unbuilt, offering insight into architects’ theoretical ideas, or photographs and artifacts from significant completed buildings.”

From the late 1950s to the 1970s, the artistic scene in New York flourished, with the opening of artistic studios and collective spaces on the Lower East Side and Soho. In the late 1970s, the area also became the place of notable commercial galleries, like the Leo Castelli Gallery. It is also possible to notice the interest of museums, galleries, and non-profit organizations in architecture exhibitions in the second half of the 1970s. In 1976, for example, the Cooper Hewitt Museum started to show architecture, and in the next decade, interesting shows took place in the institution. However, it was in the 1980s that noteworthy events happened, and when some architecture exhibitions crossed boundaries, restating the social and political relevances of architecture.

Part 2:

“Para-Site” was a site-specific installation presented in the garden hall gallery of the Museum of Modern Art from July 1 to August 15, 1989, and curated by Matilda McQuaid.

The exhibition was number 17 of the “Projects” series, which is presently named The Elaine Dannheisser Projects Series and was launched in 1971 by Kynaston McShine and Riva Castleman, curatorial staff of the museum, with the goal to present works of emerging artists and artists working in “non-traditional” forms. The project was interrupted in the early 1980s because of the museum renovation and restablished in 1986, coordinated by Liz Shearer, a former collaborator of Artists Space.

The “Projects” space could be occupied by any of the curatorial departments of the museum, but it was the first time that the Department of Architecture and Design was in charge. In 1977, Buckminster Fuller prepared an exhibition in collaboration with the artist John Cage, and in 1978, Bernard Tschumi was invited to create a work for the space, but the show was canceled. As Ellen Posner declares about “Para-Site:” ”It is the only one to be created by architects. And it appears to be one of the most, if not the most, consistent with the series original purposes.”

In “Para-Site,” the body is essential, the video art is an important reference, and the institutional social relationships are the beginning of the story. However, sharing thoughts is crucial. The addressing theme is not conducted one way but through a dialogue between Diller and Scofidio and the wide public, enabled by its presence in MoMA.

Inspired by Michel Serres’s book The Parasite (1982), in which the philosopher confabulates human relationships based on the three definitions of parasite: the biological, the social, and the technological. The idea of the opportunist whose existence depends on other organisms was expressed in different layers that structure the show.

Another reference to the installation is the “Panopticon,” a type of building idealized by Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th Century. A large circular structure and another central one were conceived to allow the person in the center to watch all the space around it, creating a system of constant surveillance–even if it was not actually happening.

When entering the gallery, the visitor would see some chairs, mirrors, texts, dotted lines in the walls, and seven monitors–four placed close to the larger wall, two hung by a cantilever supported by a column at the room’s entrance, and the last located in the bottom of the room.

Nevertheless, the project did not start in the gallery space. It was already placed in the ceiling of four revolving doors of the building’s entrance on 53rd Street, in the two escalators between the first and second floor, and “in the garden of the museum,” breaking with the concept of the inner space and connecting outside and inside through technology. Seven cameras trained in people’s movement recorded the displacement of the museum’s visitors and transmitted the live actions to the monitors located in the installation space.

It was then the support of the museum’s infrastructure that made the installation possible, as a biological parasite that depends physically on the existence of the other to live.

The exhibition brought the liveliness of the video recording, a question explored by video artworks like Richard Serra’s "Boomerang" (1974) and Lynda Benglis’ "Now" (1973). The video art production of the late 1960s and 1970s also discusses the problem of the center in art, the body in the center between the camera and the TV screen showing the just recorded image, and the self-encapsulation of the body and its psychologic issues as it is possible to notice in the works "Centers" (1971) and "Air Time" (1973) of Vito Acconci and "Revolving Upside Down" (1968) of Bruce Nauman, among others.

When looking at the monitors, the visitors were not just watching the others but they then realised that they had been watched or were going to be seen, creating a situation of voyeurism and surveillance. They have been recorded in a social space of a museum, an unexpected that caused new and disorienting feelings on them.

As reported in Diller and Scofidio’s book Flesh: “Docent or tour guide: “...come from a lineage of video artists that work with surveillance. If you watch these monitors, you will see unsuspecting people, like yourselves, coming and going...remember that image, you will see it again when we go into the main circulation hall...but remember, someone might be watching you! Follow me.”

The exhibition then made suitable the museum’s social structure and its category of a cultural space where people go to see and learn about art. The exhibition was a social parasite, taking advantage of the already existing system to interrogate people’s vision. Additionally, using video art strategies, the installation created a moment of suspension in which the visitor reflected on his actions in the museum spaces—creating moments of interference in the museum's flux—acting then as a technological parasite.