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Branham Source: The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery, Vol. 52/53 (1994/1995), pp. 33-47 Published by: The Walters Art Museum Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20169093 . Accessed: 28/09/2011 00:32
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Sacrality and Aura in the Museum: Mute Objects and Articulate Space
Joan R. Branham
The
incompatibility of museum space and "sacred space, and the curious complicity shared by those two spatial con structions, render problematic curatorial efforts both to decon
textualize/desacralize tualize/re-empower religious such pieces. works Moreover, designed of art and to recontex enter muse
"
spatial and
temporal
precludes establishing leged response. How then do spatial scenes the so-called "inherent quality" of a sacred the meaning of religious
gestures,
Is
experiential to invest
art mutable
personages,
depending
and
prises?i.e.,
atmospheric
recreations
accompanying
um-goers with perceptions similar to those of the original ob server?throw into question the shifting meaning of art and
its relationship to an ever-changing audience.
Je
n'aime
pas
trop
Us mus?es...
Je
suis
saisi
d'une
horreur
This essay focuses on theories of the arrangements? sacred and the problematic notion of oscillating spa tial definitions for the museum in curator, specifically relation to recent exhibitions at the Rockefeller Muse um in Jerusalem, the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Wash
ington, D.C.2
sacr?e.Mon pas sefait pieux. Ma voix change et s'?tablit un peu plus haute qu '? l'?glise, mais un peu moins forte qu 'elle ne sonne dans l'ordinaire de la vie. Bient?t, je ne sais plus ce venu ces suis dans solitudes cir?es, qui tiennent queje faire
du venu temple et du salon, ou du cimeti?re mon et de l'?cole... m'instruire, chercher enchantement... Suis-je 1 ?
The Deracination
The hallmark
of SacraUty
museum has been the of
"Le probl?me
of the modern
decontextualization
their centuries-old,
of art works
multilayered
dis setting, almost by definition, ritual objects out of context, plays thereby strip The and purging them of origi ping them of circumstance nal function on the and significance. This tendency,
part of the museum, to decontextualize works of art
museum
is often objects
the and new
imposition
the formal of such integrity tenor of reli they seriously alter the original their primary objects and undermine implica
evocations.
to preserve
and
Walter Work
re-empower
in his often-quoted Benjamin, essay, "The of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,"
sense
of a work of art is insepara argues that the uniqueness ble from its "being imbedded in the fabric of tradi
tion."3 jamin's This uniqueness gives contradictory rise, however, notion of to Ben "aura":
museum
perceptions by face
similar
to those
experienced
seemingly
from another
a logistical
ence/reader
conceptual
that which
tance,
produces
close is the
"unique phenomenon
be." of Benjamin closeness.
of a dis
asserts that:
however Distance
it may opposite
reception
demonstrate,
the
meaning
of an art object
is inherently
changeable,
de
The essentially
distant object
is the (1994/95) 33
Fig.
1. Fifth-century
chancel
in a "decontextualized
display"
Berlin.
con es
Here
Benjamin
object's meaning. 34
inherent lays bare the tension On the one hand, the object's
in an origi
to its significance. On the other hand, the art in spite of its accessibility work's aura prevails and a museum in exhibition. decontextualized proximity Stephen Greenblatt interprets this latter phenomenon
as wonder,
the sense These viewer of
"the power
in his or her
of
to
the displayed
tracks, evoke to an convey exalted object's
object
an
to stop
arresting
uniqueness,
dual
characteristics?the
mal
seem
or aesthetic
to suggest) upon to
nature
and its the initial
(as Benjamin
object's context?allow was a cult once object
and Greenblatt
to and the modern the within ceremonial a sacred, con set. In a de
relation
what
certain
liturgical
ence of
conventions,
a crucifix, but
like genuflecting
performing such
in the pres
gestures in an
extremely inap from Philip Fisher, the comment propriate?thus "Take the crucifix out of the cathedral and you take "b In Making and Ef the cathedral out of the crucifix. facing
images: attend
exhibition
hall would
be considered
taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1915. Fig. 2. View of the 291 Gallery African works by ritual objects are juxtaposed with European Braque and Picasso. some seem
Art, Fisher
"To to the silence
calls
them
this process
meant, that are...like stand in radiate
the "silencing"
in part, no out no longer from longer
of
to that in Re ventriloquism they to speak, they lie."11
imperatives objects
The mendacity
from from context, pieces in their their simple
of exhibited
objects
of a
does
not derive
but rather "other" the other of ob
tools their
neutrally
presence."7
moving
concludes attributes that echoing this
art works
Fisher, that one Benjamin's only
from
is "to exist
their unique
efface within of out"?an tradition."8 because brings
and
them the
initial
a cluster socialization assumption
site,
of
museum One
collection.
example
location
"fabric
of
jects adopting 291 Gallery (fig. 2). Here, works by Braque and Picasso African
over
new bedfellows
is the
1915 exhibit
at
chancel "effaced"
screens objects.
in modern As crucial
museums architec
Kota
reliquary
of ancestral
baskets
tural markers
chy and separated
that once
sacred
distinguished
from profane
priestly
space,9
hierar
these
the visitor
critically figure
and
cerebrally
evaluates
the
liturgical
charged porary to speak,
structures?displaced
environments spatial and irrelevant arrangements?now or a temporary fifth-century
from
to exist
their
their
earlier
contem so Figure plaque
intentionally
Malraux
alongside executed
expressed
neutered,
in permanent reveals
exhibits. marble
gallery not only isolates the work of art from its con text but makes it foregather with rival or even hostile
works."12 Indeed, art but the museum's associations between affair is not works of the single work of art.13
1, for
example,
from Constantinople
once belonged
displaying
a Greek
cross.10
that was ap
It
to a chancel
construction
The
art objects museum scious art
predicament
has parlance zvork.14 The given as
of
rise
incongruous,
to two art
yet juxtaposed
known the self-con and the in
proachable charged
Berlin's side ment,
an explicitly only by the clergy within area. On display and restricted today in
Museum, separated to the from tourists chancel any from piece liturgical every stands arrange angle. Sev be
chancel
Kota
museum;
reliquary
they
figure were
are naive
not created
because
for display
their makers
in a
accessible
objects
ered
tates
from
matters
tian altar,
did not
no
longer
for
dic
religious
their respective fates.15 Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party (fig. 3), on the other hand, specifical a gallery room in both size to dominate ly constructed
and intent, piece.16 works is just Yet one we example often the view space of a self-conscious both of the naive same and museum mu self seum conscious
intend
ed pieces,
museum
Spencer
objects "are
Crew
not
and James
eloquent as
Sims
some
state
thinkers
that
in
within
and
As
equipped
Barbara
with
the same
set of formal
notes,
criteria.
claim.
They
are dumb.
And
if by
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
35
' mIB
"self-conscious"
museum
piece,
The or not
litmus an and
art can
seems be
to be whether of conti
of
stripped univer The great "art," the insistence up. that is they
that
and ritually impure Jews to cross it bidding Gentiles on pain of death. The book of Acts even tells us of the mob that almost stoned Paul to death for having taken
a pagan visitor past this important marker of sacrality.
universal, time,
tran on the
predicated
Although
the ancient referent, den
immediately
signifying observer a
recognizable
sacred now and views forbid it
to
in a
irrelevance
contigency.17
first
theoretical
of their
of stripping problem them contexts and coupling serious implications to be from believed
art
corner
at the Rockefeller
(fig. 6) a few hun the soreg Mount. from the Temple Here, Dis to nothing. to all and referential Museum it no
from mise the
exhibition
atop a pedestal,
is removed to other showing soreg next to mind its original side of
of
soreg (fig. 4), an influential precur Jerusalem Temple and Jewish chancel screens. The sor to later Christian
soreg once stood in the inner precincts of Herod's
to a religious thought compound of God and known today Presence and religion as a crucial of architecture historians by stone The in for sacred model space antiquity.18 for Latin and carried Greek balustrade inscriptions
calling
um
each
is an
institution
While
"for pitting
it may not
works
be
of art against
other."19
feasible?practical
36
Gallery
Holy chapel stalled
mounted
Icons
a show
and Frescoes from an
in 1988 entitled
from the Greece.-^ P?loponn?se
Holy
A
Image,
was in fea
Space:
Byzantine
audiovisual
presentation
tured Byzantine
Pantocrator
music,
stood
and a Byzantine
isolated
icon of Christ
from the
dramatically
other
at the end of objects of display and highlighted a dark gallery (fig. 7). Commenting on such theatrical
tableaux, states that: the come so-called boutique in recent lighting that has of be ubiquitous in museums today, Greenblatt
years?a pool popular that has the surreal of effect light seeming to emerge from within the object rather to focus an it from without?is than upon or the heighten museum if modern was experi de
that wonder
increasingly
to arouse.22
Employing
texts ern ters in an audiences, attempt
staged
lighting
and reconstructed
the indifference curator "Our of interest
con
Gary
exhibition?recently
Space was
of
architectural appropriate setting of [an] historically object-audi appropriate ence in the Walters dialogue."23 Theatrical techniques
show were used, therefore, to intensify intercourse
be
and object; it evidently worked because some Greek Orthodox visitors entered the exhibit and kissed
Fig. 4. A fragment scription grounds. warning the Jerusalem soreg with a Greek Temple not to enter sacrificial sacred, foreigners of in
tween viewer
the displayed icons! Such a participatory dia inanimate object and living, breathing logue between
echoes associated with Greenblatt's objects. second Resonance, descriptive he states,
museum-goer, category
is "the power
ly, financially, soreg medieval Jerusalem or chancel apse, soreg's or logistically?to screen one original into ascertains fabric of its own reincorp?rate temple very tradition little in every t?menos of this or the ex yond in the its formal viewer
of the displayed
boundaries the complex,
object
larger
to reach out be
world, cultural to evoke forces
to a
dynamic
from which
taken suggests viewer structs by
it has emerged
to stand."24 is of art that the resonance aware on
and
for which
it may
Greenblatt when
be
a viewer that
hibited
configuration.20
the con
social the
represen
The Experiential Enterprise: Putting the Cathedral Back into the Crucifix
Laudatory efforts to recontextualize and resacralize
tational
import.
the view pulls of isolated ob implied, questions: the viewer's re they a only
objects within
these attempts
the museum
stress the art
backdrop
object's
have
original
intensified;
potency
toward
relationships is the
to be displayed?
normally
to form of
lost in decontextualized
silenced objects to
displays.
and the to
The
impart
desire
some can
re-empower "vicarious
sacrality"
museum-goer
be,
however,
equally
problematic.
The Walters
Art
day?2;>
37
Fig. 5. The
.vorhin a reconstructed
drawing
of the Jerusalem
Temple.
In resonant aura,
order show
to
devise goes
an beyond
then,
a or
recontextualization. is inextricably
Rather, linked to an
the
import
of re
audience's
bound
to
the
formal
work,
and beyond
the object has
from which
dis
in of
an
a resonant
play foregrounds
er perceives the piece.
construed
art object of
takes those
is indivisibly
discerning
cemented
it.
to the perceptions
on present
of
re
The
art works
place
of the spectator
that some
in the interpretation
sort of experience
currently
Reflecting
implies
sponses
wrote
to ancient
that "both
objects,
curators
Richard
and
Brilliant
must
recently
con
place
Vikan sional riential pact
between
goes even
the observer
further of to
and
suggest
the exhibited
that derives
object.
academics
front
another
is this thing,
time,
this artwork
somehow and open
from
be to
understanding
art works
incorporated
context
contextualism"?exhibitions inal he setting explains, rests such on the notion cannot of the and that be of an
reconstruct
contextualism,
the disciplined of the mind."29 Affirming operation to the disciplined of objects the susceptibility opera tion of the mind, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett reminds us
that "there interpretive when of are as many contexts These attempt for an object are influence of evoke the as there are issues to essence order reaction" virtually to from
objects
of the they of
compli the cu
audience business,
some
only art-audience
to be
"authentic, Because
visitor. to
reconstruct,
universal to try to
object's
meaning
not,
therefore,
solely
lie
aim
invest
twentieth-century
in its intrinsic
techniques. Nor
aura heightened
does an object
by uncanny
realize its
lighting
significance
that original, elusive dynamic. And while the processes of learning?brought about by the educational goals of
38
V'J-
-*?
>*
1 > i;
.^
^>
Fig. 6. The
Jerusalem
Temple
soreg as it stands
today, atop
pedestal
and
in a corner
at the Rockefeller
Museum
in Jerusalem.
o? feeling?evoked in galleries?are
that the "there aesthetic-emo
by not
is an
Fabricating
Curatorial
Sacred Space
attempts "to work" an object's aura have
irreconcilable, incompatibility
concurs
manipulation
the art work's
of museum
numinosi with it.
and the cog contextualism tive impact of experiential a nitive act of label reading."M One activity demands
sensory one. evoked, pends meaning. No response matter and entirely In while which in whatever on Benjamin's the the of other these solicits two a cerebral is de for noth its conditions the perception aura "represents object
experiential
encounter
The
Image, cates
Art Gallery
and spatial Frescoes
exhibition,
from Greece, among
Holy
indi other
sacrality,
things,
intended
is on display
to represent
here. Whether
the existence
or not
of
the Walters
space,
sacred
ing but
of art in
the formulation
categories of
the mere
reconstruction
nuanced
spectacle tial and
exhibit
and temporal
that prioritizes
considers, situation
the rapport
therefore, visitors,
between
the spa arriv
spectator
of museum
sents numerous
gallery curator can one
challenges
and the simply an
and dilemmas
the as
for both
the
For
their own
in the from
set of attitudes
it acknowledges
the
theoretician. sacred a
meaning therefore,
object-audience static
space
Byzantine the ob
when
transplants
sion of the object itself, to the object in conjunction with its context, and finally to the critical custody and
presence of the viewer.
ject
Or must setting
space used
generated
secration?
backdrop
hance
the meaning
of
liturgical
objects
on display
or 39
^m???^a^^^^a????ma:
ca. 1400, theatrically isolated and Space: Icons and Frescoes from Greece.
lit
are objects gathered as props in order to conjure a true object of exhibition? certain spatial entity?the Once notion of aura sheds again, Walter Benjamin's light on
duction
extracted
museum?suggest
from
its original
that the
in the in
simulation,
exportation,
sundry locations
and
reassemblage
that
of
space's
sacred
meaning.
space
the meaning
and relocation.
repro
attenuates
But
it's more
than that. I would complicated is both a fundamental dissonance sacred space, mimetic
works on sacred
space, and
space re
destroy whose
to from its shell, object is the mark of a perception the universal of equality
Theoretical
things" has increased to such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique object by
means of reproduction.33
this paradox. and Jonathan Z. Mircea Eliade Smith are two scholars who provide useful ground on holy space. In Eli work for academic conjectures
ade's view, sacred space revolves around the concept
veal
These
assumptions?if
transferred
to a spatial
totality
a break in the homogeneity of rupture and constitutes of mundane This break, often associated with space.
40
?to
^^
1993 Postmasters
Gallery
installation,
equipped
with
its own
"aura railing."
the ontological changes self. Sacred space, then, the heavenly nication between
curs and passage from one
by the mani and reality thereby of the space it significance is the point at which commu symbolized and earthly
region
of um
sacred of
space
in
vant,
presents
realms oc
to another is
of oscillating to Benjamin's
cosmic
in world
made
native
possible.34
set of
Jonathan
to
Z. Smith
explicate a
develops
"theory
an alter
of place."
emancipates
dence
history, mechanical reproduction the work of art from its parasitical depen
Smith's notion of emplacement
categories
ritual,"36
Ritual,
force
not rupture,
that construes
according
the sanctity
to Smith,
of a space.
is the critical
Ritual de
on
of a wide objects,
spectrum of consecrated
personages.
reproduced theoretically joins a in of recipro with ritual space dynamic relationship The enactment of a liturgical rite cal empowerment. Greek Orthodox in the museum by, say, a modern priest,
day,
even
a mechanically
appropriate
in a reconstructed
authentic ritual
Byzantine
instruments
chapel,
that
on a holy
are parti
Only
of these com the merging and "emplacement" can items transform and qualify a space, plementary it sacred.35 rendering
For the museum curator, Eliade's theoretical
using
tioned
the
off by chancel
setting into
screens,
a sacred
theoretically
space?a
transforms
contempo
gallery
tenets
dence
of divine
point to
rupture
the
and
ontological
transcen
the genuine Byzantine space, that is.While and Byzantine reality remain temporal
from this Byzantine reenact
insurmountable
obstacles?short
components
41
ment,
the
space's
contemporary
authenticity
relies
on
its connection
doxy. The
of Greek
a
Ortho
twenti
Byzantine
therefore,
eth-century
be seen as of placement
spatial
such.
and
The
liturgical
art works
construct
and must
and the em
recontextualization provide
Byzantine
present
day spectator
enhance the
with
meaning
an imaginary
and
bridge of
understanding
tine
The
notion
in acknowledging
and the the
distances?spatially,
The
setting ny, the ing
engineering
creates a certain the ritual demands the museum. cannot of the greater be
of sacred
friction, demands
space
and of
in the museum
at sacred by the times harmo and
space pre-exist
Byzantine prevailing
en con
merely setting
on set
notes
galleries
cess. The
include
museum are medieval once denoted matters one
"the signals
signs example chancel a of that of
that permit
warn us not a denial in
or deny
to or touch access."38
ac
the
religious
archi space?
different exclusion?mu
seum guidelines
response, but for
and
roped-off
of
areas
crowd
solicit
control,
a similar
security,
reasons
1992-93
the
satirical its
re Fig.
10. Reconstructed
barracks
from Auschwitz.
"real"
mechanically
produced
bare modes mass reverent the of
posters.
museum's inclusion
The
piece
exclusion shop
thus mimics
of and sales.39 aura by Hushed gaits
and
lays
reproduction observation,
processional
museum
essence, cred
imitate
ancient
behavior
rules and personage,
in liturgical
taboos and associated time
settings.
with give way
In
sa to
space,
objects,
policy, membership privileges, and operating an In and the essay "Art Museums insightful on of Citizenship," comments Carol Duncan
experience, in its own monumental
museum
right, and on
seum architecture. It was
for mu
Fig. 11. Display of Holocaust victims' shoes.
secular
of calling associations
42
Fig.
that transported
Jews
to the death
camp
at Treblinka.
Museums
do
not
resemble like
temples ....
memorial
museum
seeks
to
invest
the museum
visitor
other
with
what
the emotions
the museum The modern and
of a Holocaust
director sojourner passport
victim by fabricating
calls an "anti-sacred an to identifica that of a receives
traditional
ritual marked
is carefully as
and
special
. . .4()
number
corresponding
victim
The
demands sacred tension,
similarities
of space one the place with museum them, the
and
between
proscriptions in complementary
the
of
way,
the
the terrors
and starts her pilgrimage in the 1940s. In this of Europe to individualize Museum attempts
and thus the encounter, by ex
victim,
other.
tricating
mous lion." and
from
the anony
six mil deporta au is
"the fate
Whether liberation,
Reconstructing
Spatial experiential connotations reconstructions,
"Reality"
the take recently
in the Museum
notion on even of and complex Holocaust the
tion,
encounters
thentic
aura, more U.S.
barracks of victims'
from shoes
mounds Warsaw
These
enterprise in the
(fig. 10), real a dramatically and 11), (fig. used to transport Jews from at Treblinka
as
Auschwitz
opened
camp
by
(fig.
"relics of
12).
the
Memorial
Museum
inWashington,
D.C.
the museum
43
rather and
than emotional
contemplation."44 response in
In
order
to
the Holocaust
Museum
visitor, the architect James (of Ingo Freed New York City) has I.M. Pei and Partners, Architects, a powerful building of brooding, designed comprised
oppressive, constricted and unsettling and spaces crooked, punctuated false with passageways perspective
and pathways (fig. 13). Even the ubiquitous use of bricks and industrial metal alludes, albeit ab stairwells
stractly, to the architecture of camps and crematoria.4'
Commenting
ture, Freed I felt not an
on
explains: that
affective
architec
intellectual
working visceral
building ... I was building with the idea of a visceral memory, . . .You as visual as well pass screen We [facade] disorient to
this was
an
emotional
to
Although
tectural the Holocaust vacation
more
daunting
at
and
recreational
solemn
than archi
theme parks, of these
Museum?like a momentary
some
environment
of Witnesses
leading
to entrance
way
that requires tourists to suspend disbelief temporarily in order to be swept away with the invented reality most in the is have entered. This just prominent they
section entitled the Holocaust make-believe Daniel's Story, an to ghetto area children. quarters designed Here equipped to the make visitor accessible
Holocaust," meant
as
synecdochal concrete
devices reality
greater
enters
and
the totality of the ineffable. Visitors from all over to to the museum their pilgrimage the world make
these genuine as Robert relics of destruction, has causing pointed out, one if to wonder,
with
babies for
dingy
crying, dinner.
family,
cooking by
sound
on
effects
the
of
turnip signs
stove
view
Handwritten
"Daniel"
encourage
Bergman
these
come torture cross
transported
relics in and of the the U.S.
objects will
such tradition, of thorns.42
in some
as the
inverted way be
instruments the wood of of the
the young observer to participate with the stage set by looking at clothes under the bed, by opening windows
to see the view Daniel's outside, or personal by pulling articles. out Ada drawers Louise to examine
e.g.,
Huxtable
Museum to engage effects the possible. employs viewer As that
writes
of
"doctored
consists
reality"
of "a
The
Memorial techniques
American
encounter,
skillfully
a chosen
edited,
place,
engineered,
or theme."47
and marketed
At the
version
Holocaust
of
the most
sobering
John
Burgess
have
of
the Washington
on the new
Post
commented,
as the
Museum,
emotional
however,
responses
the
from
mingling
modern
of
viewers
solicited
with real
"Planners
settled
technology
and to give best way to reach the MTV generation a jolting to the older visitors exposure sights and
sounds seum's folk of son the et era of the Nazi presentation exhibits because rather than their death camps."43 finds The mu in as states Ivan in lumi?re its analogy
artifacts
"naive
like victims'
museum objects")
shoes
and yellow
and fictitious
stars
(that
"anti-sacred"
suggests ambiguity just as to what atmospheres of real "object" of display is. The indeterminacy
memorial's ed Holocaust perceptions focus, victims, of us the then?whether themselves, visitors, i.e., it be or the the represent reactions witnesses?
characterized emphasis,
"blowout" Karp,
and
passive,
encouraging
the new
44
museum
as
a mimetic prominent
signifier
of location
the
Holo
the memorial's
disclose
yet another
Americans, Judaism. The
problematic
non-Jewish museum,
relationship
Americans, centrally and located
among
the on
Jewish
of Na the
history
tional Mall
inWashington, the Wash D.C, overlooks Monument and the Memorial ington Jefferson (fig. site makes 14). This charged geographical palpable and
to the
the presence
according
identity
conceptual
of Jews
thrust
in America,
of the museum,
which
is
inextricably Holocaust.
ence Fig. 14. Location National Mall. of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on the in
to and expressed in terms of the monument to This public the Jewish pres linked
landscape commemorates the de
the American
struction
culture.
of Jewish
civilization,
not
In view of may
caust Jonathan may, ing of propriate scrambled to survive There
the complex
objects of museum museums,
relationships
sheltered space, one must
indeed The
reveal on
the
key
led
among the
emphasis
has, Rosen to be
the experiential
wrote home also not
Museum
however,
constructs
recently sure,
simple
and underlying
foster
a feel ap irony
how is an object's question: when it is transported from its hall of the museum?
value contexts. of of an Or the art one work, may
One
de see de of
the Holocaust
spatial
construction the
is a reverse
in order papers of non Jews. papers at work as here, principle to enter leave, the mu fash in some
particular, powers
pendent
interpretative
the
individual
viewer.
Surely
different
the Jerusalem
to a Roman
Temple
soldier in
expected and
soreg meant
something
than it does
the heaps
to a Roman
of Holocaust
tourist
in the
victims'
The be
danger
in that
this the
vicarious surrogate,
adventure faux
seems reality?pow
to
the moment
carry dis luggage and shoes on display inWashington for the skinhead youth and the Is parate connotations on the same day. raeli rabbi, both visiting the museum
Yet we have taken our initial question about the ex
erful and gripping at every turn?potentially promises the visitor that by proxy "you too can experience the Holocaust." The language of the official press packet
corroborates struct and the historical blurry line presence, between stating artificial that on con the
tracted
broached
object
a more
one
step
further
issue:
in this article
the supposed
and
con
perplexing
happens
a in religious
when
ob
third
with
floor
the grim
(1939-45),
reality of
"visitors will
the ghettos,
come
face-to-face
murder
the mass
by mobile
construction requirements?
(1933-39),
'Kristallnacht,'
visitors
when
"will experi
the
questions
leashed
ish The floors tor's term taneous museum-goer. owned
of synagogues
burned to the on covered of minutes a real
and Jew
ground." these in the two visi long instan by the
cisms, although only tentatively drafted here, may pro vide one possible key to the curatorial discipline if in into shows and with the corporated presented along
objects tary?a would tered struct of they gesture reveal in and the address. that the actual re-present and Such Greenblatt tensions construction a sacred to go and self-referential termed negotiations of space one exhibits. within step To the further commen "resonance"? encoun recon arena and
victim's the
endurance and
from perceived
the museum,
then
45
effectively
is even
or not
the
this practice
nature of sa
Voices,
Effacing
Art, 22.
possible,
label. Such self-impli than any declarative also lead the viewer to grasp cating techniques might more that of meanings the multiplicity profoundly cred space
fluctuate object, the among space, the and various the entities own involved?the perception in viewer's
connotations when it left soreg took on additional Temple an exhi Israel in 1992 to appear as part of 'J?dische Lebenswelten," for "Patterns in Jewish Life," in Berlin?the bition commemorating mer seat of the Third Reich. In this exhibition, the soreg acquired the status "Patterns of a religious of Jewish Life" artifact appeared signaling to some a defunct critics In fact, simi disturbingly past.
that Hitler
relation
ing the
to original
audience
historical
to a more
responses?thus
nuanced awareness
bring
of the
shifting nature
called "aura." of what Benjamin The Getty Center for the History Humanities ofArt and the Santa Monica, California
having to stand the first-century words, soreg came to Berlin as charged as its original in a negative in a landscape one, albeit sense. See "The Precious and A. R. Cohn Legacy" by L. A. Altshuler in the book by the same name, D. Altshuler, ed. (New York, 1983),
24-39. 21. Holy Image, Holy Space: Icons and Frescoes from Greece, M. Acheimas ed. (Athens, tou-Potamianou, 1988). "Resonance," Exhibiting Cultures, 49.
22. Greenblatt,
Notes
1. P. Val?ry, 1290-91. 2. I would "Le probl?me des mus?es," Oeuvres, II (Paris, 1960),
23. G. Vikan, read Context," tion of Museum 24. Greenblatt, like R. Brilliant, M. Meadow, and D. to thank 25. Greenblatt, 26. Vikan, 27. Vikan,
the Numinous: Method?Ancient Modern "Working at the June Associa of the American 1992 meeting 11. Directors, "Resonance," "Resonance," 2. 10. Exhibiting Exhibiting Cultures, Cultures, 42. 45.
M. K. Frieden, G. Vikan, com Fane for their helpful A. Glass, Hause, on this paper. to the Kress Foundation, ments I am also indebted Association of University Women, and the Getty Cen the American ter for the History of Art and the Humanities and rewriting of this piece. ing the writing for their support dur
"Numinous," "Numinous,"
"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical 3. W. Benjamin, Repro ed. (New York, 1969), 223. H. Arendt, Illuminations, duction," 4. 5. Benjamin, "The Work of Art," 243, n. 5.
see W. Iser, The Act of Reading: A 28. For reader-response criticism, The Re (Baltimore, 1978) and E. Freund, Theory of Aesthetic Response turn of theReader (London, 1987). 29. R. Brilliant, "Editorial: Out of Site, Out of Mind," Art Bulletin,
Poetics
Display,
(Washington, 6. H.
and Effacing
Art the
(New York, 1991), 19. Also see in "The of museums rhetoric 103-106.
Eliade's
Art, Art, of
theProfane
(San Diego,
the function
of chancel
screens,
Churches,"
in Ancient Erasure Synagogues Space Under The Art Bulletin, 74/3 (1992), 375-94. and H.-G. (Mainz, Severin, 1992), 112. Authenticity: Das Museum f?r
To Take Place:
in Ritual,
37. A reversal 10. A. Effenberger byzantinische Kunst 11. S. R. Crew Dialogue," andj. sp?tantike und seum tograph Fragments of a 38. Fisher, spaces
of this phenomenon in cathedrals, which and liturgical altarpieces Effacing Art, 11.
modern
objects.
E. Sims, Cultures,
Exhibiting
"Locating 159.
39. See S. Kolbowski, Effacing of Silence, trans. Art, 11. S. Gilbert (New York, (Summer 1993), "Silvia Kolbowski 40. C Duncan, 91.
"Once more, with feeling...already," October, 65 review of the exhibition, 29-51 and K. Johnson's at Postmasters," Art in America, 1 (1993), 98. and the Ritual of Citizenship," Exhibit
Effacing Effacing
"Art Museums
ing Cultures, the intended or unintended and the Museum," 38-42. 19-21, 27. Exhibiting destinies New of York 41. M.
"The Artist
of Books, 34/19
(December and
in this to me orally in a telephone transmitted a report on the of and the conception development see M. Berenbaum, U.S. Holocaust Memorial "On the Pol Museum, itics of Public Commemoration of the Holocaust," Shoah (1981-82), Berenbaum For terview. 6-9, 37. Holocaust in the context of other this Holocaust memorial place see J. E. Young, The Texture ofMemory: Holo monuments, caust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven, 1993). To thank R. Bergman for bringing up to a shorter version of this paper, this parallel presented when he re Art
16. F. Haskell,
"The Artist
"Objects
of Ethnography,"
375-79.
42.1
sponded
at College
46
Association, 43.J.
February
Washington
Burgess, Post
suc 44.1. Karp, "Festivals," Exhibiting Cultures, 282. One of the most this is in the trav Museum cessful ways the Holocaust accomplishes of the Children." On the wall are pictures "Remember eling exhibit faces made up of one-and-a-half million children's dots, the number of children in the Holocaust. As you touch a dot you leave killed fingerprint?a way of contacting your distinctive and participating to you?as set of patterns unique with that single life. a
to its four years prior 45. Addressing the museum's architecture of the New York Times (April 30, 1989) Paul Goldberger opening, warns in literal fashion ends up representing that if the museum Nazi his concentration thus kitsch and title, themselves, camps trivialize the events of Evokes "it could Events become somewhat As sug not the Holocaust still more."
"AMemorial
States
Holocaust
Memorial
Museum,"
Assemblage,
American 3, 1992),
The New
York Re
, "American
Holocaust," 1, J?rgen
Forward Berlin,
Alfred
fig. Liepe, Malibu, California, Stieglitz, J. Paul Getty Donald Woodman, Judy Chicago; by permission Israel Antiquities Toledano, Jerusalem, Authority; Dov,
PHOTOGRAPHS:
Walters Jerusalem; fig. 7, Baltimore, New York, Postmasters figs. Gallery; U.S. Holocaust Memorial D.C, Washington, Noble, Arnold um. Kramer, Washington, D.C, U.S.
fig. 3, figs. 4, 6, Leo fig. 5, Meir Ben Art Gallery; fig. 8, Kevin 9-13, Alan Gilbert, fig. 14, Muse
47