Looking beyond interaction: exploring meaning making through the windows of an art gallery
Looking beyond interaction: exploring meaning making through the windows of an art gallery
How is meaning produced in and around the art gallery? Sociological answers to this question are limited by a narrow focus on inter-gallery group interaction and cognitive interpretation. I argue that such approaches would be strengthened by accounting for the diverting effects of gallery context and atmosphere, both in and beyond the gallery. Art gallery windows offer a lens through which to explore how issues of context and atmosphere are negotiated in and around an art gallery in everyday life. I trial this approach using data from a fourteen-month case study of Bluecoat, a city center art gallery in Liverpool, UK, which has a series of windows that mediate between the gallery and the neighboring shopping street. The windows partition zones of meaning; frame vision; contribute to the symbolic meanings of a gallery’s exterior architecture; and modulate its interior atmosphere. The analysis models a meaning-centered sociology of the art gallery that moves beyond interpretation and towards a broader understanding of the currents of meaning in and around the art gallery.
316–336
Harris, Laura
400fa14a-eb29-4d11-9377-97680f5401d4
27 November 2021
Harris, Laura
400fa14a-eb29-4d11-9377-97680f5401d4
Harris, Laura
(2021)
Looking beyond interaction: exploring meaning making through the windows of an art gallery.
American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 10, .
(doi:10.1057/s41290-021-00146-x).
Abstract
How is meaning produced in and around the art gallery? Sociological answers to this question are limited by a narrow focus on inter-gallery group interaction and cognitive interpretation. I argue that such approaches would be strengthened by accounting for the diverting effects of gallery context and atmosphere, both in and beyond the gallery. Art gallery windows offer a lens through which to explore how issues of context and atmosphere are negotiated in and around an art gallery in everyday life. I trial this approach using data from a fourteen-month case study of Bluecoat, a city center art gallery in Liverpool, UK, which has a series of windows that mediate between the gallery and the neighboring shopping street. The windows partition zones of meaning; frame vision; contribute to the symbolic meanings of a gallery’s exterior architecture; and modulate its interior atmosphere. The analysis models a meaning-centered sociology of the art gallery that moves beyond interpretation and towards a broader understanding of the currents of meaning in and around the art gallery.
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Accepted/In Press date: 30 August 2021
Published date: 27 November 2021
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Local EPrints ID: 472122
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/472122
ISSN: 2049-7113
PURE UUID: bbb75c70-2d7b-4874-bd94-db0fc7cdd1f8
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Date deposited: 28 Nov 2022 17:37
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 04:17
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Author:
Laura Harris
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