The Technology of Aesthetics
The White Cube as a Given and as a Methodological Choice
White exhibition spaces opening out from each other, a semi-transparent, variable installation of a LEGO structure with a smooth surface, white marble floor, a light birch tree behind the works of art with a Perspex wall in front. Inside, different objects of both everyday use and celebration, photos, paintings, documents, letters, maquettes, souvenirs, diaries – objects of art, understanding the history of which is aided by a white band of text running along the walls. 100 Years – 100 Objects is the title of the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives’ exhibition, which turns an anniversary ‘moment’ in an intellectual direction. The main focus is the critical collection history, the story of the museum’s foundation and expansion through the connections of community, city and history. Yet the exhibition is not about the past, enclosed, not only since its own history is brought up to today, but also because it gives the museum’s collection a mental adventure, which unveils the institutional space presumed to be isolated, motionless and historical, treats its own story as an open work in constant movement and in order to do that it chooses an interior and visual language whose natural medium is the white, clear, artificial gallery space: the white cube. The Irish art critic Brian O’Doherty, who lives in New York, considers the modernist, white gallery space thus: “Some of the sanctity of the church, the formality of the courtroom, the mystique of the experimental laboratory joins with chic design to produce a unique chamber of esthetics.” His writing is now considered a classic text of art theory and art history, though it is rarely referred to in the Hungarian museum context. 1916 is the Jewish Museum’s official year of foundation, but the idea dates back to earlier times. In 1931 the museum moved into its Dohány Street building, in which the space planned as a cultural centre was used as an exhibition area. Only monochrome photos remain of the building’s interior from that time, but they reveal that the space was probably white. In the first third of the 20th century even for presenting the contemporary arts there was no methodological minimum regarding the visually neutral, ‘artificial’ white gallery space. In the case of the anniversary exhibition in the Dohány Street building the white cube is not only practical but a conscious methodological decision. The once again white gallery space is a methodological answer not only to recreating the former space, but also to the recently dismantled, 30-year-old permanent exhibition, which opened in 1984. The 100 objects are in an installation medium which functions like a coordinating system, in which they are presented in an appropriate space.