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My thesis is an interpretive case study of the exhibition Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis (Tate Modern, 1 February – 29 April 2001). It examines a variety of issues pertaining to the making of institutional modern and contemporary art exhibitions in a Western urban context today. It is concerned with exhibition studies’ methodology, the reciprocity between the art institution and the city, and the relationship between the art institution and the independent curator. With regards to methodology, I propose various readings of an exhibition that fall under two types of knowledge, namely visible and invisible knowledge. The former refers to all aspects of the exhibition that are seen in the public domain, while the latter considers not immediately accessible information about the exhibition, such as archival material and oral history. I also examine the mutual relationship between the city and the institution through the instrumentalization of the exhibition by city politics, and the correlative micro and macro effects. I thus link the exhibition to a passage from an industrial to a post-industrial economy, New Labour politics and the competition of cities in a worldwide urban network. Within that framework I analyse associated issues, such as London’s urban regeneration and cultural tourism, city branding, changing city demographics, the link between the institution, the city and governmental agendas, and the ‘world city’ race. Finally, I question the changing relationship between the art institution and the independent curator. I reflect on the advantages and limitations of curatorial practice in the context of that relationship by considering the exhibition as a platform for the concurrent expression of both personal and collective curatorial interests, and the exploration of canonical versus contemporary approaches. I conclude that an in-depth study of a contemporary exhibition on these grounds allows for important insights to be gained that contribute to the fields of curatorial and exhibition studies, as well as to urban theory.

This thesis examines art and architecture commissioned by three large-scale industrial corporations in Britain in the interwar period 1919-1939. The companies studies are the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later to become British Petroleum (BP), Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) and Unilever. The main focus of attention is on the headquarters office buildings constructed in London and their sculptural decoration. Attention is also paid to artwork used by Unilever on the covers of its in-house magazine 'Progress' and in its advertisements. A laboratory built by ICI near Manchester is also considered. The form and meaning of the works of art are examined using evidence of the relationships between the artists and the patrons, those within the companies who commissioned the works, as it is documented in the archives of the companies. Evidence is also taken from the published histories of the companies, the response of critics as revealed in contemporary publication, and the recent history of the appropriate genres and of the individual artists. Art history is currently undertaking a reappraisal of 20th century British art rejecting the view that the significant art was either, on the one hand, that which belonged to some canon of modernist work, or, on the other, only that which remained true to some view of what was traditionally British. This thesis makes a contribution to that re-appraisal. The approach of examining the mechanisms of patronage has not been applied extensively before to this period and place. In the process much new material about individual artists has been uncovered. In addition by suing the large-scale corporation as its framework, the study has thrown light on one of the major social changes of the period, the growth of a new professional class. This new class, whose habitat was the large bureaucracy, was developing an ideology of rationality and progress by technology which was to help shape 20th century attitudes and 20th century art.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of the History of Art, 2006. / Adviser: Bruce Cole.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of the History of Art, 2006. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Nov. 3, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-08, Section: A, page: 2787. Adviser: Bruce Cole.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, History of Art, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 21, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-10, Section: A, page: 3782. Adviser: Patrick R. McNaughton.

Inaug.-dis.--Strassburg. / "Von der der fakultät vorgelegten und in den 'Studien über christliche denkmäler' ... vollständig erscheinenden abhandlung ... werden ... hier nur die beiden ersten kapitel mitgeteilt." Vita.

This thesis acknowledges the role of the designer and design in constructing and communicating the meanings that become attached to materials. This critically engaged study of wood is informed by Roland Barthes's semiological analysis and seeks to expose the myth of wood as a natural material. It demonstrates that complex technical and cultural processing result in a series of connoted meanings becoming attached to wood. By referring to Jean Baudrillard's distinct 'Phases of the image' (in Simulacra and Simulation, 1981) it is able to question critically examples that include the use of wood in the work of twentieth century and contemporary artists and designers. It asks whether the role of wood in the examples presented is to reflect reality, mask reality, mask the absence of reality or ultimately to reject reality altogether. The thesis is organised into a series of eight interconnected thematic chapters that present an essentially industrialised understanding of wood. It concludes that wood is a tremendously varied material, able to describe its substance at its surface. In spite of its variety, a simplified graphic depiction of wood benefits from the cultural understanding of the material that has been developed over a lengthy period of time, during which the product of the natural landscape has become cultivated and commodified.

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