Abstract/Summary

This research enquires into how any artefact, when shown in public, is inseparably intertwined with its staging and context in an act of communication which is bound in time and space and that surpasses the meaning of the sole work. To stage the works within a chosen context is the crucial role of exhibition design, as the means providing the grammar, the syntax and building the very text of a display whose meaning is ultimately shaped by its actual reception, in the visitors' experience. Challenging a still widespread concept like the existence of ‘neutral installations’, this research also investigates whether and to which extent it might be possible to read an exhibition as the possible conveyor of a very peculiar kind of visual text: a narrative. Furthermore, this research also aims at analysing and practicing a possible bijective methodology, apt not only for reading, but also for a more conscious writing (design) and clarity of the physical staging. Clarity in presenting will also be discussed as one of the primary goals, to enable also non-specialist visitors by giving them wider access into exhibitions and fostering the effectiveness of the curatorial plans in organizing and framing the interactions with their public. Lastly, the possible existence of a specific, deeper, relationship between this complex form of communication and its context (both physical and cultural) will also be put to test, relying on the practice-based part of this study. The experienced practice was therefore organised and articulated according to three main set of actions. Firstly, a widespread network of ‘instant’ exhibitions, the ‘Footnotes in the margins’, organised with several batches of young artists and designers to allow material displays even in times of pandemic restrictions and to experiment on the most essential tools to design an exhibition: text and context. Secondly a middle-term plan for the definition of a flexible tool, the atlas of reception, exploring a new form of visual narrative, based on the acts and actors of reception more than on decontextualised stories on marginalization. And finally, an overview of a long-term (still ongoing) project for the rooting of the new diffused museum of Bicocca, Milano, a critical enquiry on the strategy for it to become pervasive albeit without structures of its own whilst helping rethink the very nature and structure of a new public cultural institution.