Abstract
The Westminster Menswear Archive, housed at the University of Westminster held an exhibition in 2019 entitled ‘Invisible Men’. The purpose of this show was to “shine a light” on men, or more accurately menswear which had been hitherto neglected by scholarship and exhibitions featuring dress (Groves and Sprecher, 2019). This article draws on research conducted at this exhibition to ask anthropological questions as to the nature of menswear both in the gallery space and beyond. Fundamentally this will question the invisible nature of menswear and whether such invisibility really exists. In order to accomplish this, this article will suggest a new theory of the gaze that exists in the gallery or exhibition space – the gallery gaze – and use it to provoke analysis of the ethnographic material presented. This article acknowledges a distinction between intellectual, semiotic and symbolic invisibility but suggests a different approach, arguing for an (in)visibility of progressive degrees.
Highlights
This article introduces a new theory for how we can consider objects within an exhibition space and the gaze which falls upon them
The gallery gaze acknowledges that the gallery space itself encourages a specific kind of looking
This article has introduced a theory for the gallery gaze – a specific form of the gaze which exists within the exhibition space
Summary
Gazing on invisible men: Introducing the gallery gaze to establish that (in)visibility is in the eye of the beholder at Westminster Menswear Archive.
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