Blockbuster Exhibition Research Articles

‘Francis Bacon: Man and Beast’, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 29 January – 17 April 2022. Catalogue: Eds. Michael Peppiatt and Stephen F. Eisenman, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2020, 160 pages, hardback, ISBN 1912520559, £35.00.

The Royal Academy’s blockbuster exhibition, Francis Bacon: Man and Beast, sought to explore the ways in which Bacon looked to and drew inspiration from the animal kingdom within his art. Man, he seemed to suggest in his paintings, is just another animal. This review assesses the successes of the exhibition, interrogating the various connections made between animals and humanity in Bacon’s work, and situating the exhibition within the broader context of recent public scholarship on the artist. 

Eat, Think, and Grow: Museums' Navigation Through Times of Neoliberal Culture Politics

Museums are very significant tourism attractions, and some of them feature food either as objects of art or in historical or nature contexts. This article outlines a new curatorial approach to the exhibition EAT ME at Trapholt Museum of Modern Art and Design, Denmark. In the curatorial approach Trapholt was inspired by experience economy and social marketing, in order to both create a blockbuster exhibition and initiate important reflections among visitors on how food has become a kind of super metaphor, with which almost any topic in the world can be explained. Indirectly, the museum questioned the political driving forces that continuously emphasize the growth agenda, where tourism is always an obligatory element. The contribution of this article lies in the explanation of the intriguing endeavor of excavating food for thought in a wider perspective than nourishment and entertainment.

'New Gustavians'

The early 1990s saw Sweden severely hit by financial crisis, electoral upheaval and a swift reorientation within political elites resulting in an application to join the European Union (EU). Focusing on the Swedish blockbuster exhibition project Le Soleil et l’Etoile du Nord (The Sun and the North Star) in Paris during spring 1994, this paper argues that the early 1990s represent a key transition period for the renegotiation of the relationship between business, politics and culture in Swedish foreign promotion and cultural diplomacy. In a wide-ranging campaign launched in France ahead of the EU membership, political communication, cultural heritage narratives, and export promotion were brought together in an ambitious national identity political project that showcased a new, liberal-conservative and inherently European Sweden.

The Future of Blockbuster Exhibitions After the Covid-19 Crisis: The Case of the Dutch Museum Sector

This article deals with the long-known vulnerability of the blockbuster exhibition business model, which is defined as an exhibition that receives major loans, aims to attract a large body of visitors and uses marketing methods to achieve this. In light of the current Covid-19 crisis, which resulted in the closure of museums, blockbusters have become especially problematic. This article addresses to what extent – and for which types of museums – it will continue to be feasible to organise blockbusters in a post-Covid era. In research conducted on behalf of the Dutch Museum Association in 2020–2021, interviews with representatives of 14 Dutch museums were held, in addition to desk research. This research focused on the impact of the crisis on blockbusters and related phenomena such as scheduling and financial struggles, improvement of online platforms and the system of governmental support. Based on the data, conclusions were drawn regarding the viability of future blockbusters in different types of museums in the Netherlands. The article demonstrates that the crisis had potential to serve as a catalyst for changes that were already well underway. The constant growth that has taken place in the museum sector in the past few years appears to not be sustainable, especially if museums continue to compete for visitor numbers while overlooking the visitor experience. In this light, the Covid-19 crisis might serve to facilitate positive transformation, which could in turn enforce the speed of a much-needed shift in the museum sector; nonetheless, the results of this research show otherwise.

Henry Clay Frick and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: the blockbuster exhibition of 1910

Abstract November 1909 the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston inaugurated its second home, in a grand neoclassical-style building, and premiered innovative exhibition designs based on research in European museums. Henry Clay Frick soon displayed fifty of his paintings in the museum’s Old Masters gallery – the only occasion in his lifetime that he would lend such an expansive selection of paintings from his collection to a civic museum. Archival discoveries offer a reconstruction of the historic moment that brought together the new Boston museum, Frick’s paintings and an engaged public, shaping Frick’s vision of his collection’s legacy.

Review: Designs for Different Futures

Book Review| June 01 2020 Review: Designs for Different Futures Designs for Different Futures: Philadelphia Museum of Art. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: October 22, 2019–March 8, 2020. K. Johnson Bowles K. Johnson Bowles K. Johnson Bowles is an artist, art critic, and founder and principal consultant at Gordian Knot Consulting. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Afterimage (2020) 47 (2): 64–70. https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2020.472012 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation K. Johnson Bowles; Review: Designs for Different Futures. Afterimage 1 June 2020; 47 (2): 64–70. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2020.472012 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAfterimage Search A collaboration by three major art museums, Designs for Different Futures was an exceptional and unexpected offering. If one wished to experience a typical blockbuster exhibition featuring famous works of fine art assembled to woo and wow the masses, one would have had to seek elsewhere. Nor should one have expected this exhibition to be an optimistic huckster vehicle nostalgically or ironically reimagining past world's fairs and international expositions. This radical departure from the frequent lineup of rare, valuable, and famous art enabled museum-goers to experience designs (and concepts) they have not encountered prior, while being challenged intellectually and emotionally. Authorship of the works also challenge preconceptions: artists? designers? manufacturers? a collective body? It depends on the piece. The gasps heard in this exhibition weren't prompted by seeing a Monet in person for the first time. The sounds were provoked by the insights gleaned and the fear instilled when contemplating... You do not currently have access to this content.

We owe ourselves to debt: Classical Greece, Athens in crisis, and the body as battlefield

Since 2009, Greece has been hit by a severe economic recession followed by harsh austerity policies, gradual impoverishment, and ultimately social collapse. This article investigates the cultural landscape of the so-called ‘Greek crisis’, focusing on Athens, the nation’s capital, and the ways the crisis discourse employs biopolitical technologies of dispossession and displacement in order to generate an intensified breed of body-politics. The article’s main case study is documenta 14, a blockbuster exhibition of contemporary art organized in Athens in 2017, seemingly elaborating on the ideas of debt – classical and modern – though in fact promoting neoliberal approaches to public economy and life. The idea of ‘classical debt’, the article concludes, continuously reiterated by both Greece’s defenders as well as its most unforgiving critics, rather than acting as an emancipatory force, ends up producing a public consisting of silent bodies, trapped in highly romanticized discourses of the past and ultimately unable to defend themselves. This tension, however, also provokes narratives and gestures made of contradictions and ambiguity, difficult to map and monitor according to established research protocols.

The Form and Content of ‘Digital Spatiality’: Mapping the Soft Power of DreamWorks Animation in Asia

Abstract The article explores a series of blockbuster exhibitions of DreamWorks Animation developed by the Australian Centre of the Moving Image (ACMI) in collaboration with one of the largest Hollywood producers. Curated by ACMI, this blockbuster exhibition was designed to provide a behind-the-scenes look into collaborative processes involved in DreamWorks animations. This exhibition travelled across the Asia-Pacific in 2015-2017 and was hosted by a number of museums, such as the ArtScience Museum in Singapore, the Te Papa Museum in New Zealand, the Seoul Museum of Art in South Korea, and the National Taiwan Science and Education Centre in Taiwan. It displayed over 400 unique objects from the studio’s archive ‘of rare and never before displayed material’, such as drawings, models, maps, photographs, posters, and other artworks. The article explores the highly favourable reception to the DreamWorks Animation blockbuster in different cities in Asia. It employs a geo-visualization of Asian engagement with the blockbuster exhibit to reveal and explain local and global mechanisms of ‘attraction’ power, generated by DreamWorks in different Asian countries. Contributing to the special issue, this article engages with two aspects of it: the form, cultural digital mapping; and the content, the nature of media pop culture exemplified through the traveling blockbuster.

The appropriation cycle: novice and expert consumers

PurposeRecognizing the value and limitations of current knowledge of the appropriation process in the consumption of aesthetic experiences, this research aims to generate a localized account for novice and expert consumers of the varying role of cultural capital in the appropriation cycles and interpretative responses of an aesthetic experience.Design/methodology/approachThis research uses a single case study design of Miró’s blockbuster exhibition, and draws on multiple sources of evidence, notably 50 in-depth visitor interviews, observations and archival records.FindingsAn evidence-based framework of the appropriation process for novice and expert consumers of aesthetic experiences is offered. This framework highlights the significance of appropriation pace and personal versus communal interpretations – amongst other features – in distinguishing distinct versions of the appropriation process in accordance with the varied accumulation of consumer cultural capital.Research limitations/implicationsThe transferability of the findings to other aesthetic or experience-based consumption contexts such as performing arts or sports is discussed, alongside the relevance of the proposed framework for researchers of aesthetic experiences.Practical implicationsThe empirical investigation of the understudied connection between visitors’ cultural capital and their museum experiences provides insights into curatorial and marketing practices in terms of broadening, diversifying and engaging museum audiences.Originality/valueThis research provides new theoretical insights into the literature of appropriation process and consumption of art experiences by bringing together consumers’ cultural capital with the appropriation process and interpretive responses to an aesthetic experience.

The Splendor of Dresden in the United States, 1978–79

The Splendor of Dresden was an astonishingly lavish blockbuster exhibition loan from the German Democratic Republic to the United States between 1978 and 1979. Yet the history of its conception and execution reveals the tensions and ambivalences that underwrote cultural diplomatic efforts in the era of the Helsinki Accords, even those at the grandest scale.

Life and death in audience development. The exhibition on Pompeii at the British museum, 2013

ABSTRACTValues and orientations of cultural professionals are important to understand the performance of the institutions they manage. While there are striking differences in orientation across countries, their impact has rarely been investigated systematically. This paper offers a case study of a blockbuster exhibition mounted by the British Museum in 2013 using objects loaned by the Superintendence of Napoli and Pompeii. Based on interviews and documentary sources, the study analyzes and explains the perceptions of the Italian professionals with relation to the value and the payoffs of the exhibition, and critically compares these to those of the British Museum. The Italian authority did not recognise the strategic potential of the partnership with the British Museum. Consequently it did not pursue or win any significant gains in the areas of resources, reputation or audience development.

Looking at the One and Only: The Return of the Single-Work Show

Today’s museums are using their collections in new ways, most notably as event resources for institutional programming. The current context of collection repurposing is a phenomenon much broader than the logic exposed by François Mairesse under the rubric of “the museum as spectacle.”[1] It participates in the larger paradigm of what we call the “museum as event.” [2] The high point of the museum as spectacle was emblematized by the rise of the blockbuster exhibition and the multiplication of museum buildings erected as grand architectural gestures: these involved programming and expansion. The museum as event is a logic that permeates every part and aspect of the institution, including the collections that the spectacular museum rather took for granted and often neglected. It appears important, therefore, when addressing the issue of the relations between a museum and its collections, not to focus exclusively on the renewal of permanent displays, but to also question how collections are impacted by the intrusion of events into their territory. What are the new curatorial strategies, the new or renewed exhibition formulas that are deployed in order to “awaken” the collections and bring them into the fast and convulsive time of the event? For our study of this phenomenon, rather than look at collection-based exhibitions, increasingly popular among art museums, or permanent collection reinstallations, we chose to focus on a seasoned formula that is making an often innovative comeback: the single-work show.

Tutanchamun fotografieren – Zur Produktion eines Ausstellungsstars

To Shoot Photographs of Tutankhamun - The Making of an Exhibition Star. In the 1970s, the exhibition "Treasures of Tutankhamun" toured the world. It still ranks today amongst the most popular museum exhibitions of all time. This article explores photography used in the catalogue of this blockbuster exhibition in the USA and West Germany; it describes how the pictures of Tutankhamun's objects, which were made by a team from the Metropolitan Museum in New York, introduced a significantly new and different approach to catalogue photography. Until the 1960s, Ancient Egyptian artefacts had been documented by means of bare frontal or profile images in black and white; their close-grained, accurately shaded quality allowed the objects to be investigated independently of the viewer's location. The high gloss colour images of the 1970s, however, instead sought to lend the objects something a photograph could not normally achieve: a palpable presence. They captured sensational traces, creating star items that one "just had to see for oneself". In other words, the article presents how catalogue photos were able to participate in the creation of star objects and therefore also contributed to the exhibition's enormous success. The historical background behind the rise of this sensational photography in the 1960s and 1970s will be discussed and framed theoretically. In showing how photography played an important role in transforming the objects taken from Tutankhamen's tomb, it argues that mobilising museum objects through media can induce (semiotic and material) transformations of objects.

Revenue, relevance and reflecting community: Blockbusters at the Art Galley of NSW

Museums are judged not solely on the basis of their exhibition quality and collection care but, within a corporate model, they are also judged on quantitative measures such as audience numbers and, in turn, their financial viability. Programming has, therefore, become a major focus of forward planning and the basis for funding development. Blockbuster exhibitions, strategically placed throughout annual programs, have been a common way to increase audience numbers and sustain support. In more recent times, the blockbuster model has developed to address more complex measures of success beyond their quantifiable benefits. In addition to the aim of increasing visitor numbers, the blockbuster exhibition and its associated public and education programs, have been effectively utilized as a means of broadening and diversifying audiences. Such efforts help museums to meet expectations, often set by governments, to address and reflect the diverse demographic communities within which they are situated and to whom they serve.The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) in Australia provides one such example of a museum that is working creatively within the blockbuster model in order to present exhibitions that build on their collection strengths and existing programs, attract large audiences and engage diverse audiences by focusing on community building. This paper uses the AGNSW blockbuster exhibition The First Emperor: China’s Entombed Warriors, to examine the role of this format in contemporary museums more broadly. We use this exhibition as a frame by which to analyse how the Gallery has modified the blockbuster model, and indeed built on it, in order to target geographically and culturally diverse audiences. We argue that this has been effectively achieved as a result of the Gallery building blockbusters around their curatorial and collection strengths, by working with external organizations and community groups and by offering a range of activities and opportunities for engagement both within the museum and outside of its boundaries. This exhibition proves that when blockbusters are used creatively to support museum wide efforts to engage culturally and linguistically diverse audiences they can achieve success that is both quantitative and qualitative.

“Enlightenment, Advertising, Education, Etc.”: Herbert Bayer the Museum of Modern Art's Road to Victory

“In the beginning was virgin land and America was promises.”2 So began the text panel located in the opening panorama of the photo exhibition Road to Victory: A Procession of Photographs of the Nation at War that the Museum of Modern Art organized in 1942 and circulated between 1943 and 1945. Years before Edward Steichen became curator of photography at MoMA and organized the global blockbuster exhibition The Family of Man, he combed government, press, and corporate archives to select the photographs for Road to Victory, his first curatorial project at the museum. Encircling the opening text were large photographic panels of picturesque landscapes, stern Native Americans, and a few buffalo. The largest panel—of pristine mountain valleys—was sixteen by twelve feet, making the viewer about the same height as the three portraits of Native Americans. Exhibition designer Herbert Bayer, recent Austrian émigré and former Bauhaus master, removed the walls from the second floor of the museum, using the large-scale photographs to structure the exhibition architecturally. Arranged in a semicircle, these opening panels welcomed the viewer and urged him to follow the curve into the exhibition.

Costume drama: Diana Vreeland’s ‘Romantic and Glamorous Hollywood Design’

Abstract This article examines the legacy of Diana Vreeland’s 1974 exhibition ‘Romantic and Glamorous Hollywood Design’ for contemporary curatorial approaches to Hollywood costume exhibitions. Staged during her time as a Special Consultant at the Costume Institute, this was the first blockbuster exhibition of Hollywood costume held in a major museum. Alongside exploring its historical significance, I argue that this exhibition offers particular insights into Vreeland’s body of work, articulating a synergy between curator and subject matter. To illustrate the ongoing influence of ‘Romantic and Glamorous Hollywood Design’, I explore a contemporary curatorial project, ‘Costumes from the Golden Age of Hollywood’, which has direct and indirect connections to Vreeland’s exhibition.

Art and national interest: the diplomatic origins of the “blockbuster exhibition” in Australia

The first museum blockbusters in Australia were not conceived to support the local interests of tourism. The circumstances that gave rise to the earliest exhibitions were quite different from the situation today. Of these interests, cultural diplomacy was a key rationale behind the Commonwealth's involvement in major art exhibitions, or so-called “blockbusters”. This paper concentrates on the period in the 1970s when art blockbusters first attained national significance. It reveals some of the issues and challenges that followed the Commonwealth's foray into art, focusing on the roles of the various national agencies tasked with managing these events, namely the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council, the Australian Art Exhibitions Corporation, the Australian Gallery Directors' Council, and the International Cultural Corporation of Australia.

Art, Architecture, and Religious Orders in the Latin Americas: From Quebec to Quito

Art, Architecture, and Religious Orders in the Latin AmericasFrom Quebec to Quito Gauvin Alexander Bailey (bio) Painting of the Kingdoms: Shared Identities; Territories of the Spanish Monarchy, 16th–18th centuries. 4 volumes. Edited by Juana Gutiérrez Haces; introduction by Jonathan Brown. Mexico City: Fomento Cultural Banamex, 2008–2009. Pp. xlviii + 1503. $400.00 cloth. ISBN: 9786077612063. Les arts en Nouvelle-France. Edited by Laurier Lacroix. Quebec City: Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, 2012. Pp. 296. $59.95 paper. ISBN: 9782551252114. Jesuiten aus Zentraleuropa in Portugiesisch- und Spanisch-Amerika: Ein bio-bibliographisches Handbuch. Band II: Chile (1618–1771). Edited by Johannes Meier and Michael Müller. Münster: Aschendorff, 2011. Pp. 1 + 458. $60.00 cloth. ISBN: 9783402117897. Jesuiten aus Zentraleuropa in Portugiesisch- und Spanisch-Amerika: Ein bio-bibliographisches Handbuch. Band III: Neugranada (1618–1771). Edited by Johannes Meier and Christoph Nebgen. Münster: Aschendorff, 2008. Pp. xxxvi + 244. $60.00 cloth. ISBN: 9783402117880. The Art of Painting in Colonial Quito / El arte de la pintura en Quito colonial. Edited by Susanne L. Stratton-Pruitt. Philadelphia: St Joseph’s University Press, 2012. Pp. xii + 337. $75.00 cloth. ISBN: 978091601695. Imágenes guaraní-jesuíticas: Paraguay, Argentina, Brasil. By Bozidar Darko Sustersic. Asunción, Paraguay: Centro de Artes Visuales / Museo del Barro, 2010. Pp. 421. ISBN: 9789995386948. Quito, ciudad de maestros: Arquitectos, edificios y urbanismo en el largo siglo XVII. By Susan V. Webster. Quito: Abya-Yala, 2012. Pp. viii + 298. $40.00 cloth. ISBN: 9789942090706. [End Page 181] The past four years have witnessed a sea change in the scholarship on viceregal Iberian American art history as well as that of the other Latin America, Nouvelle-France. Although the literature on Iberian America continues to focus mainly on the traditional New Spain/Cuzco/Lima corridor, new monographs on the arts of Quito (two in 2012 alone, The Art of Painting in Colonial Quito; and Quito, ciudad de maestros) and Paraguay (Imágenes guaraní-jesuíticas, 2010), as well as superlative archival studies of the impact of non-Spanish Jesuit priests and brothers—many of them craftsmen and architects—on Nueva Granada and Chile (Jesuiten aus Zentraleuropa in Portugiesisch- und Spanisch-Amerika, volumes 2 and 3, 2011Jesuiten aus Zentraleuropa in Portugiesisch- und Spanisch-Amerika, volumes 2 and 3, 2008) are demanding that scholars no longer treat those regions as marginal to the field. Likewise, a major four-volume compendium of the painting of the Spanish Empire (Painting of the Kingdoms, 2008) has focused new attention on transatlantic themes, looking at artistic interaction within the entire Spanish Empire, including the Americas, Flanders, Portugal (under the Spanish monarchy between 1580 and 1640), and Southern Italy, although regrettably neglecting the Philippines. Similarly, colonial Québécois art history, hitherto virtually unknown outside the province and subject primarily to survey treatments, now takes its place on the hemispheric stage with a thematic, intelligent, and visually rich exhibition and companion volume from the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Quebec City (Les arts en Nouvelle-France, 2012) that compels us to acknowledge the commonalities of the arts and visual culture of this region and those of its Catholic counterparts to the south. Although wide ranging, the volumes of Painting of the Kingdoms—published in advance of a blockbuster exhibition at the Prado and Palacio Nacional in Madrid (2010–2011)—fall short of being encyclopaedic, since the project limits itself primarily to pre–Bourbon era painting and concentrates on Europe, Mexico, and Peru despite brief forays into Brazil, Quito, and Nueva Granada. Its main theme, that the Spanish Crown and the Catholic Church were “agents of unity” (25) in the Americas, risks turning into a celebration of European sovereignty, but enough of the chapters focus on regional variations that it avoids falling into that trap. Each volume takes a different theme, with some overlap. The first, One King, Many Kingdoms: New Perspectives, considers global interaction and the notion of a new artistic language arising from contact between dialects. The second, The Kingdoms and Painting, features surveys of painting in Spain, Italy, New Spain, Peru, and Luso-Brazil (mostly Portugal) and is useful in illuminating the diversity within these regions. The...

Una”significant form” svelata L’allestimento della mostra” Italian Art” alla Royal Academy nella Londra del 1930

My essay argues with the Exhibition of Italian Art 1200-1900 at the Burlington fine Arts Club, made possible by Mussolini and Lady Ivy Chamberlain in 1930. It focuses on the development and deployment of the aesthetic display resources theorized by Roger Fry to enhance the visitors’ experience of the art work, unveiling a hidden structure in the rhythm of the art galleries. In the growing interest amongst curators, interpretation managers and designers exploring ways in which they can enhance public understanding of, and access to the arts and decorative arts, this study builds a frame into which display discourses might find a proper set and a parameter model. It highlights words spoken and written about Italian Art and its legacy in London and Italy during Fascism, exploring ways of organising the rooms and hanging the precious selected works of art, deploying distinctive aesthetic resources, designing a display with a ‘significant form’ able to enhance the impact of the vision of art, aiming to give London the highest emotion of art. Thanks to the display descriptions left by Haskell and Witt it is now possible to retrace a structure in the galleries design of this very first blockbuster exhibition. It nourishes the debate on art display strategies and styles preserving national identity within the mood of postmodernism. It figures out a model that could be adapted or be inspiring for museum and galleries professionals today.

`China Design Now'

This article draws from cultural studies, political theory, international relations, art history and museum studies in order to consider `China Design Now' — the blockbuster exhibition, recently held at the V&A. It argues that, despite the inclusion of a number of interesting exhibits, the attempt to frame contemporary Chinese design independently of political contextualization has led to an exhibition which is largely unsatisfying. The approach taken by the V&A is further shown to have produced several ironic outcomes. First, by attempting to avoid `contentious' political issues, the museum has, in fact, forced the `political' to the fore. Second, by taking such an approach, the V&A demonstrates that it has failed to understand the essentially political nature of the design problem. Third, it has produced an exhibition which appears to advocate a (highly political) neoliberal agenda — one which insists on an inexorable drive towards greater global economic integration. Finally, it has failed to mention its own embeddedness within larger strategies of `cultural diplomacy' and the significance of such strategies for international relations and for cultural production. As well as drawing on a range of relevant literature, the article makes direct reference to exhibition wall texts, exhibit labels and quotations from the catalogue in order to support its argument.