abstract: The purpose of this research was to assess the condition of the human/building interface at sidewalk level by reframing our view of contemporary architecture using Google Street View images. In particular, the goal was to find a means by which aesthetic engagement in the urban cultural ecology could be measured. Photo-elicitation, semantic differential, and visual assessment methods were adapted and combined to develop a photo-semantic assessment survey instrument for this study aimed at evaluating respondent preference for building images. Architectural adjective usage amongst 14 graduate students was surveyed, and the resulting 175-word list was synthesized down to seven positive and seven negative adjectives. Eleven representative buildings were selected from the Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture, and photographic Street Views were created. The photo-semantic assessment survey instrument was administered to 62 graduate students given their demographic is reasonably similar to the urban walker stakeholder in the outcome. Respondent preference for the building images was then ranked ordered and correlations were run against various image factors including facade complexity, transparency, and streetscape quality. Moderate to strong correlations between preference and several image factors were observed indicating that certain building design factors, particularly facade complexity, may play a predictable role. Several avenues for future research are suggested including the comparison of lab versus on-site respondents; the comparison of user types including targeted, passerby and tourist; the effect of skyline on user preference for Street Views; and the effect of participation in the building making process on short and long term respondent preference. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Architecture 2014

Queering the Museum: Utopian Futurity in Contemporary Exhibitions expands the history of American art beyond its tightly policed borders to include curators, viewers, artists, and artworks as key players in contemporary queer exhibition surveys in U.S.-based museums. Exhibition histories are not the sole domain of museum or curatorial studies, and are as much a part of art history as artists and art objects yet they remain understudied and under-analyzed within the field. I posit that a queer art history not only analyzes the relationship between works of art, but it also engenders the potential to queer the visitor (through the viewing of artworks), considers the production and circulation of artworks within the institution, and disrupts a normative experience of time and space in the museum. Working interdisciplinarily through queer, feminist, and critical theory, my intervention offers an analysis of exhibitions, not as a history per se, but as a constellation of projects that unfolded across U.S.-based museums located in Philadelphia and New York from 2017 through 2019. Placed within the longer context of queerness in the museum I analyze three case studies: Johanna Burton’s, Sara O'Keeffe's, and Natalie Bell's Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon (2017) at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Nayland Blake’s Tag: Proposals on Queer Play and the Ways Forward (2018) at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Philadelphia; and the collectively curated (Margo Cohen Ristorucci, Lindsay C. Harris, Carmen Hermo, Allie/ A.L. Rickard, and Lauren Argentina Zelaya) exhibition Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years after Stonewall (2019) at The Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center. I parse what this particular constellation of exhibitions did at that specific moment in time, one right after the other, all clustered together both physically (within the northeast corridor) and also conceptually. While institutional critique has primarily been applied to the production of artwork by artists who intervene in and critique various artworld structures from museums to galleries, my dissertation proposes the term to encompass the entire exhibition as a critique of normative exhibitions and the institutions that present them. The curators of these queer exhibitions engage in deterritorializing traditional museum spaces thereby reterritorializing them with nontraditional artists and artworks. In doing so, the curators construct queer sites of discourse as heterotopias both within and outside of the museum structure offering glimmers of hope, if only momentarily, for ways of being in the world. / Art History

This practice-based research project investigates the production, distribution and reception of network art practice before and after globalisation. It does so to engage with the Internet as 'the most material and visible sign of globalisation' (Manovich 2001) whose emergence as the pre-eminent network technology arrives concurrently with the disappearance of its utopian promise. Taking Robert Filliou's 1968 conception of The Eternal Network as a starting point, the research seeks to understand the opportunities and limitations of network art practice through identifying and developing a range of curatorial and artistic methods in practice. Methodologically, it presents the researcher as an artist-curator-performer. Doing so enables 'inhabitation' (rather than 're-enactment') of the concepts and principles of Filliou's work. Filliou thus becomes a medium of research for the development of network art practice after the Net and vice versa. Curating only the second edition of The Art-of-Peace Biennale becomes the primary output of the research. Filliou conceived of the Biennale in 1970, proposed it in 1982 and René Block organised the first edition at the Kunstverein, Hamburg, Germany, in 1985. The contemporary edition, The Next Art-of-Peace Biennale 2015-17, occurred mainly but not exclusively through the online platform, www.peacebiennale.info. It did so to respond to the radical shift in modes of online production, distribution and reception since the first edition. The research describes, contextualises and reflects on the emergence of The Next Art-of-Peace Biennale 2015-2017 and describes a final exhibition, What is Peace? (Answer Here), held in 2018. It presents a contribution to knowledge through artistic and curatorial practice exploring online and offline exhibition-making, video, performance, correspondence art and writing. Through developing an ontology of 'curatorial behaviour' exploring the 'locations', 'durations', 'materialities' and 'interactions' of network art practice, the research identifies artistic and curatorial principles able to withstand the 'high-tech gloom' (Thompson 2011, p. 49) of mendacious globalisation in a late Web 2.0, postmedium condition.

This thesis explores the rich and provocative fields of interaction between Australian artists and museums from 1975 to 2002. Artists have investigated and engaged with museums of art, social history and natural science during this period. Despite the museum being a major source of exploration for artists, the subject has rarely been examined in the literature. This thesis redresses this gap. It identifies and examines four prevailing approaches of Australian contemporary art to museums in this period: oppositional critique, figurative representation, intervention and collaboration. / The study asserts that a general progression from oppositional critique in the seventies through to collaboration in the late nineties can be charted. It explores the work of three artists who have epitomised these approaches to the museum. Peter Cripps developed an oppositional critique of the museum and was intimately involved with the art museum politics in Melbourne during the mid-seventies. Fiona Hall figuratively represented the museum. Her approach documented and catalogued museum tropes of a bygone era. Narelle Jubelin’s work intervened with Australian museums. Her work has curatorial capacities and has had real effect within Australian museums. These differing artistic approaches to the museum have the effect of contesting history and expanding narrative within museums. / Curators collaborated with artists and used artistic methods to create exhibits in Australian museums during the 1990s. Artistic approaches are a major methodology of museums seeking to contest traditional modes of history and expand narrative in their exhibits. Contemporary art has played a vital, curatorial, role in the Hyde Park Barracks, Museum of Sydney, Melbourne Museum and Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, amongst other museums. While in earlier years artists were well known for their resistive approach to the art museum, this thesis shows that artists have increasingly participated in new forms of representation within art, social history, and natural history museums. I argue that the role of contemporary art within “new” museums is emblematic of new approaches to history, space, narrative and design within the museum. (For complete abstract open document)

The remarks on this subject stem from the conditions spatial works engender in the encounter with the viewer. The aim has been to provide the reader with a framework within which to place individual experiences of the works. The exhibition Spatial Works, to which this research paper is connected, exemplifies variations within spatial work. By organizing an exhibition around this context, the variations presented is fleshed out. The research preceding the exhibition has resulted in the development of a specific terminology; an articulation of different practices in installation art. Psychodramatic, Thespian, Temporal and Permutation are here seen as mannerisms of spatial works of art. The expanded significance presented in this paper is a feature of composition, as the dramatic condition characterizes the encounter between object and subject. The polyphony of information encountered by the viewer is not only created by the art work itself, but also by its signifying composition, so to say `al fresco´ of the work, of which the observer gains certainty of the pieces spatiality as well as understands of the work of art. / WIRE, Critical Writing and Curatorial Practice

Exhibition design conjoins distinct architectural and curatorial requirements. It is proposed that the common language of architecture and curatorship is space: how displays are arranged to be viewed in particular sequences and visual frames, placed in fields of co-visibility or grouped according to their spatial arrangement as well as their stylistic, historical or other classificatory labels. As visitors become immersed in exhibition space they are exposed to an informally staged pedagogy aimed at enhancing their enjoyment and understanding of the exhibition. The second floor of the High Museum of Art, with the permanent collection of objects, opened in 1983, is chosen as a case study. Meier designed the original building and decorative arts exhibition. Scogin and Elam produced a significant modification in 1997 to house a thematic exhibition. Lord Aeck and Sargent restored a simplified version of the original layout in 2003. Rigorous quantitative analyses document these successive changes and identify the fundamental shifts in exhibition design principles that they represent. Visual relationships, the break up of space and patterns of movement are analyzed using standard space-syntax methodologies. New techniques are proposed in order to describe and quantify overlapping patterns of spatial grouping. It is shown that the original design encouraged visitors to view and compare objects in alternative ways, generating open-ended readings and multiple understanding. The 1997 layout dictated sequences of viewing and framed frontal views in order to communicate how art engages human experience, including the body or the environment. The 2003 layout re-instated multiple viewing points and comparative groupings while emphasizing the individual work. The dissertation examines how architecture and curatorship interacted in a unique building which provides great experiential richness as well as design constraints. In addition, it demonstrates how descriptive theory can help bridge between architectural and curatorial intents by capturing the principles of arrangement which are fundamental to both.

Since hitting mass markets in the 1920s, refrigerators have occupied a lovable corner not just in American kitchens but also in American culture. The story of humankind has always been the story of food, around which we congregate, negotiate power, and explore methods of control. As the U.S. transitioned to industrial, mechanical convenience in the twentieth century, refrigerators replaced hearths as household communication centers, and it has become commonplace to decorate refrigerator surfaces with photographs, keepsakes, lists, and other items of visual culture. As meaningful, expressive arrangements, the curatorial dimensions of such displays have called for their investigation. From January to June of 2013, the Other White Cube Project studied the cultural phenomenon by collecting photographs and questionnaires online at theotherwhitecube.com. From 200 submissions, the project connected activities at home with institutional roles at large. The educational effort performed post-museum theory, in which audiences and institutions share power, build community, and promote awareness. By equating museums with everyday spaces, curators with everyday people, and art with everyday objects, the Other White Cube Project approached three keys to learning in art museums - comfort, relevance, and readability. The project also examined the aesthetic, social, and practical barometers that direct daily choices, which shape consciousness and subsequent interactions with space. In that sense, everyone is a curator - of some kind and of some place.

This thesis explores the rich and provocative fields of interaction between Australian artists and museums from 1975 to 2002. Artists have investigated and engaged with museums of art, social history and natural science during this period. Despite the museum being a major source of exploration for artists, the subject has rarely been examined in the literature. This thesis redresses this gap. It identifies and examines four prevailing approaches of Australian contemporary art to museums in this period: oppositional critique, figurative representation, intervention and collaboration. / The study asserts that a general progression from oppositional critique in the seventies through to collaboration in the late nineties can be charted. It explores the work of three artists who have epitomised these approaches to the museum. Peter Cripps developed an oppositional critique of the museum and was intimately involved with the art museum politics in Melbourne during the mid-seventies. Fiona Hall figuratively represented the museum. Her approach documented and catalogued museum tropes of a bygone era. Narelle Jubelin’s work intervened with Australian museums. Her work has curatorial capacities and has had real effect within Australian museums. These differing artistic approaches to the museum have the effect of contesting history and expanding narrative within museums. / Curators collaborated with artists and used artistic methods to create exhibits in Australian museums during the 1990s. Artistic approaches are a major methodology of museums seeking to contest traditional modes of history and expand narrative in their exhibits. Contemporary art has played a vital, curatorial, role in the Hyde Park Barracks, Museum of Sydney, Melbourne Museum and Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, amongst other museums. While in earlier years artists were well known for their resistive approach to the art museum, this thesis shows that artists have increasingly participated in new forms of representation within art, social history, and natural history museums. I argue that the role of contemporary art within “new” museums is emblematic of new approaches to history, space, narrative and design within the museum. (For complete abstract open document)

This thesis presents three main arguments. First, that curating in national museums is a process of meaning making and that the exhibitionary meaning is situated in and mediated by culture, thus, the products of curatorial work, i.e. the exhibitionary complexes are complex political and cultural constructions. Second, that the exhibitionary complexes final visual outcome, i.e. the exhibitionary complexes images and texts result in the presentation of mythological constructs of Byzantium as the only truth to their audiences. Third, that what is finally communicated through the presentation of mythological constructs of Byzantium is national identity and dominant cultural values. The latter is effected through the representation of the Byzantine Empire as part of the identity of the dominant cultural group of the country to which each national museum belongs. National identity is communicated through the exhibitionary complexes, either by suggesting historical continuity of the contemporary national identity of a country s dominant cultural group through Byzantium, as in the case of the Greek national museums, or by undermining the very idea that Byzantine history, European history and British history are so very different, as in the case of the British Museum. Both interpretations are culturally constructed realities . The above approaches are explained through the investigation of exhibitionary meaning around Byzantium, by identifying and analysing the nature and cultural functions of the presuppositions that are involved in each museum s curatorial practices. These presuppositions are the cultural ideas, values and beliefs of the involved dominant cultural groups on Byzantium and on their own identity. My identification and analysis of these presuppositions includes research on the historical, political and cultural context of each museum, the culturally accepted history and art history literature of each country on Byzantium, as well as research on museum archives. By explaining and using the curatorial concepts of democratisation and demystification , adopted and adapted to the practices of the museums under study, and by analysing the British and Greek interpretations of Byzantium, which make themselves apparent in the images and texts of the British and Greek exhibitionary complexes , I provide a cultural account of the making of exhibitionary meaning, explaining contemporary perceptions of Byzantium, its use in identity making and its relation to national politics. By doing this, I also explain the implications of those presuppositions to the making of exhibitionary meaning, and I provide an explanation of how and why the power system of the exhibitionary complex is still in play although we are shifting into the era of the Democratic museum (Fleming, 2008). The concluding remarks of the thesis include suggestions for the further development of the curatorial practices of democratisation and demystification.

Cette thèse se veut une réflexion sur l’articulation entre les théories postcoloniales et les pratiques curatoriales de l’art contemporain ; elle cherche en effet à souligner les perméabilités et la relation dialogique qui se sont instaurées entre celles-Ci. Il ne s’agit pas d’expliquer les théories postcoloniales appliquées aux pratiques curatoriales et d’en donner une sorte de mode d’emploi, mais plutôt de les visualiser. Par visualiser nous n’entendons pas illustrer, ou fournir une translittération de la théorie, mais bien donner à voir les différents développements et incarnations de celle-Ci. Les contextes britannique et américain des années 1980 et du début des années 1990 font l’objet de la première partie de la thèse dans la mesure où tous deux sont à la fois les lieux d’émergence des théories postcoloniales et des sociétés clés de l’histoire coloniale. La deuxième partie s’attache à la seconde moitié des années 1990 et au début des années 2000, un moment où les théories postcoloniales deviennent des outils indissociables de l’analyse de la globalisation. Enfin, la troisième partie propose d’envisager un monde post-Occidental au XXIe siècle, post-Occidental dans le sens où l’éclatement de la notion de centre/périphérie nécessite des déplacements et des réajustements épistémologiques dont les expositions d’art contemporain sont d’actifs vecteurs, particulièrement celles cherchant à articuler un propos postcolonial / This thesis is a reflection on the relationship between postcolonial theory and curatorial practices in contemporary art, with an emphasis on the permeabilities and dialogic relationship that has developed between them. It does not seek to explain postcolonial theory as applied to curatorial practices or to provide a so-Called user manual, but rather to visualize them. By “visualize” we do not mean to illustrate or present a transliteration of the theory, butinstead to note various developments and embodiments thereof. The United Kingdom and America during the 1980s and early 1990s are the subject of the first part of the thesis to the extent that they are both places of emergence of postcolonial theory and also key societies in the context of colonial history. The second part focuses on the second half of the 1990s and early 2000s, a time when postcolonial theory as a tool become inseparable from the analysis of globalization. Finally, the third part proposes to consider a post-Western world in the 21stcentury, post-Western in the sense that the dissolution of the concept of center/periphery requires certain shifts and epistemological adjustments for which contemporary art exhibitions are active vectors, particularly those seeking to articulate a postcolonial discourse