Bárbara Coutinho is an Art historian. She has a degree in History of Art, a Master’s degree in Contemporary Art History, Post-graduate degree in Art History Education and holds a PhD on Culture and Technology in Architecture with the thesis “The Exhibition Space as a ‘Total Work of Art’ – The Museum of the 21st century, a place for a global aesthetic experience”. Director and programmer of MUDE – Museu do Design e da Moda, Colecção Francisco Capelo since 2006, she is the author of the museum museological programme. As a Guest Assistant Professor at Técnico, University of Lisbon, she teaches Architecture Theory and History. Her work is divided between research, teaching, curatorship and writing, having as main topics of interest museology and curating, architecture and exhibition space, design and contemporary creation. Among the several exhibitions she curated, particular relevance for the traveling exhibition How do we pronounce design in portuguese? (2014-2020).
Ana Tostões is an architect, architectural critic and historian, president of Docomomo International and editor of the Docomomo Journal. She is a Full Professor at Técnico, University of Lisbon, where she is in charge of the Architectural Scientific Field. She has a degree in Architecture, a Master’s degree in History of Art with a thesis entitled Os Verdes Anos na Arquitectura Portuguesa dos Anos 50, and holds a PhD on Culture and Technology in Modern Architecture awarded with the X Bienal Ibero-Americana de Arquitectura y Urbanismo Prize 2016. She has been invited professor at universities worldwide. Her research field is the Critical History and Theory of Contemporary Architecture, focusing on the relationship between European, Asian, African and American cultures. She coordinated the research project “Exchanging World Visions which publication Modern Architecture in Africa: Angola and Mozambique” was awarded with the Gulbenkian Prize 2014, and currently coordinates the research project “Cure and Care the rehabilitation”.
While recognising the part that digital media play in bringing about greater accessibility to artworks display and ensuring that they are more visible, this paper argues that the physical exhibition continues to be the primary place for the public to encounter the arts, as it can offer an engaging and meaningful aesthetic experience through which people can transcend their own existence. As such, it is essential to rethink now, in the scope of an increasing digital world, the exhibition in conceptual and methodological terms. For this purpose, the exhibition space must be considered as content rather than container and the exhibition as a work, often with the intentionality of a “total work of art”, rather than just a vehicle for exhibiting artworks and objects.
Having the former purpose in mind, this paper proposes a re-reading of the exhibition designs of Frederick Kiesler (1890–1965), Franco Albini (1905–1977) and Lina Bo Bardi (1914–1992) in order to evaluate how their theory and practice can provide useful lessons for our contemporary thinking. The three architects, assuming the role of curators, use only the specific language of an exhibition and remix conventional modes of communication and architectural vocabulary, exploring the natural and artificial light, materials, layouts, surfaces and geometries in innovative ways. They considered the exhibition to be a work of art, overcoming the container/content dichotomy and trigging an intersubjective and self-reflective participation. Kiesler, Albini and Bo Bardi may all be considered visionaries of our time, as they offer a landscape that stimulates our curiosity through a multiplicity of information arranged in a multisensory way, allowing each visitor to discover associations between himself and his surroundings. None of them simply created an opportunity for distraction or entertainment. This perspective is all the more pertinent nowadays, as the processes of digitalising information and virtualising the real may well lead to the dematerialization of the physical experience of art.
By drawing upon these historical examples, this paper seeks to contribute to current study on how an exhibition can stimulate the cognitive, emotional and spiritual intelligence of each visitor and clarify the importance of this effect in 21st century museums and society at large.
