Harris, Laura (2022) Looking beyond interaction: exploring meaning-making through the windows of an art gallery. In, McCormick, Lisa (ed.) The Cultural Sociology of Art and Music: New Directions and New Discoveries. (Cultural Sociology) Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 223-250. (doi:10.1007/978-3-031-11420-5_9).
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 14-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 toward a broader understanding of the currents of meaning in and around the art gallery
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