In any art museum, artworks are the stars in any exhibition, and expert professionals in the art of displaying art make sure this is the case. These are architects who design exhibition spaces so that they are well suited to the artworks, highlighting characteristics deemed relevant for their appreciation by the curators. This work is called museography, and it is done in cooperation between architects and curators.

Much of our perception of an art exhibition is connected to its museography, which involves determining the characteristics of a certain space and the resources utilized in the setting so visitors can perceive the exhibition in a certain way. This way depends on the museography take. If the tone is neutral, the artworks reign alone and the space is barely noticed; if the tone is assertive, on the other hand, the relationship between artworks and space is emphasized, requiring a more active attitude from visitors; when the tone is imposing, the space takes over the artworks—which may even disappear. Many different factors are considered when choosing the museography style, having the artworks as the main pillar of decisions: Why use neutral museography to display some artwork that cannot stand on its own?

Exhibitions devoted to museography are rare, perhaps because it is assumed that visitors are not interested in such technical matters. When a museum dares to promote a show about display forms, visitors have a chance of realizing that there is much art behind something that should be invisible and that it involves many subtleties that shape our way of seeing art. The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Museum has organized such an exhibition that, beyond discussing what museography is, promoted reflections on expographic styles utilized to display its own collection on a permanent basis.

Inaugurated in 1969, the exhibition spaces at the Gulbenkian Foundation reflected designer Franco Albini's museographic conceptions. Together with Carlo Scarpa, he is regarded as a master in contemporary museum design. By recreating some of the 1960s solutions used in art exhibitions, the Art on Display—Formas de Expor show highlighted contrasts between suspension and rigidity by arranging artworks through playful and immersive solutions proposed by Aldo van Eyck and Franca Helg, as well as by the British couple Alison and Peter Smithson.

Visitors to the exhibition could experience five different ways of looking and living with art in reconstituted environments based on archival photographs and architectural drawings presenting museographic solutions designed for the Gulbenkian Foundation. Sure enough, the artworks on display belong to the Foundation's collection.

It is worth mentioning the exhibition environment at MASP, recreated from Lina Bo Bardi's project for the institution’s headquarters at Avenida Paulista. Together with the glass easels that reveal the back of the works, there are clarifying texts and images of Lina's museographic proposals, such as the displays she designed for MASP’s first headquarters at Sete de Abril Street in the early 1950s, which are directly inspired by Albini and Helg’s fixed vertical tubes. In 1954, the duo was in São Paulo and designed the museography of a 16th and 17th centuries paintings exhibition at MASP. The works seemed to float on the walls covered with loose, light fabrics. Was that Lina’s inspiration for the 1959 Bahia exhibition? It is quite likely it was.

Art on Display—Formas de Expor

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Museum, Lisbon

From November 8, 2019, to March 2, 2020

Curators: Penelope Curtis and Dick van der Heuvel

Images credits: Exhibition views with re-creations of architectural displays designed by Aldo Van Eyck, Carlo Scarpa, Franco Albini & Franca Helg and Lina Bo Bardi © Pedro Pina

Museography Is Not Art, But Just So