To enter the Stedelijk is to enter a temple of design, modernity, and contemporaneity. The shape of the building is surprising, the entryway is full of light, and it is way less intimate than a commercial gallery. People visit the Stedelijk to experience art with others.
The General Idea exhibition (April 1–July 15, 2023), a massive retrospective of the group’s work, was situated downstairs, in the lower level of the museum. Famous for their deconstruction of the art world and their satirical reflection of the media, the collective consisted of three people—Ronald Gabe (aka Felix Partz, 1945–1994), Slobodan Saia-Levy (aka Jorge Zontal, 1944–1994), and Michael Tims (aka AA Bronson, b. 1946)—and was active from 1969 to 1994.[4] The museum and the collective had a dear relationship: The Stedelijk was both the first museum to exhibit the collective’s work and to collect it.[5]
The exhibition was curated by Adam Welch, from the National Gallery of Canada, and Beatrix Ruf, the director of the Stedelijk at the time. Separated into three galleries and an introduction hall, the exhibition first presented three big pills, a work named Green (Permanent) Placebo, in General Idea’s colors: blue, red, and green (fig. 5). The first gallery already contains many ideas, signaling that the art collective was prolific, and that the conceptual nature of their work allowed them to experiment while developing their humorous tone toward the media and the public.
Figure 1. General Idea, The Belly Store, 1969, installation with found cash register, wood, latex paint, glass, metal; George Saia’s Belly Food editions (re-created for exhibition). Photo: Peter Tijhuis. © Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
The work The Belly Store (fig. 1), consisting of a white box, with spotlights on the ceiling that shine on a white counter, was central to this gallery. On the opposite side of the gallery, in Line Project (1970), were ropes lying on a stand, referring to a “rope-holding event ”[6] that General Idea hosted, in which 10 people were invited through a paid announcement on the radio to participate in a “conceptual art project .”[7] Images of the event and the invitations are shown above the ropes (fig. 2). In addition to these two works were documents and artifacts to contextualize the art: photographs, artworks that take the shape of charts, note cards, a radio show announcement, and notes of discussion with the public.
Before the second gallery, TOUR DE FORCE effectively summarizes the collective’s activity. AA Bronson travelled with this snakeskin-covered photo album from Toronto to Vancouver to present General Idea’s works through photographs. With this album, AA Bronson indulged in the role of a salesperson, satirically depicting the communication between artists and institutions.
Figure 2. On left side: General Idea, Line Project, 1970, installation with rope, typescript on bond paper, Polaroid prints, offset print on paper, gelatin silver prints. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, gift of General Idea Inc., Toronto. Photo: Peter Tijhuis. © Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
The second gallery was larger, yet also had white walls, wooden floors, and numerous artworks of different formats, beginning with a video called Luxon Video (1973–74), which shows an office or a gallery where people are scattered, talking. Not far from the video is the presentation of the FILE Megazine, a satirical spin on Life magazine, which started in 1972. Numerous volumes are presented in a glass box resting on a wooden table. Visually, the gallery atmosphere corresponded to the definition of the white cube. The gallery subtracted itself from the art. However, the introduction to the exhibition began with a splash of colors (fig. 5), announcing a theme, or at least signaling that primary colors would be part of the exhibition. Despite the colorful entryway to the retrospective, with blue, green, and red leading visitors down the stairs, the neutrality, or even office-like aesthetic, of the first two galleries made me feel like I was watching a documentary. I had been expecting a fun, party-like atmosphere and instead had to acclimate myself to a serious environment. The starkness of the two introductory galleries, however, contrasted with the explosive aesthetic of the final room, where the colorful introduction finally manifested.
The rest of the second gallery was centered around a key project: the famous beauty pageant organized to elect Miss General Idea, one person chosen to become the group’s muse. The popular, glamorous beauty pageant format allowed the artists to play with the vocabulary of the media and point to the clichés of the art world and its surrounding body of myths. With this extravagant project, they foregrounded queerness because a large part of the Miss General idea concept was to show what was taboo and hidden in the art and, more generally, public sphere (fig. 3).
Figure 3. General Idea, Compliments of Miss General Idea, 1992, offset on buff paper, 13.6 × 11 cm. General Idea Collection, gift of AA Bronson, 2018. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.[8]
A lot of space was given to this project and its continuation over the years. Not only did it occupy most of the second gallery but it also continued into the grand hall—the third and largest gallery—with derivations and extensions of the concept: dresses worn during ceremonies, architectural plans for a fictional Miss General Idea Pavillion, the ballots used for the announcements. The 1984 Spirit of Miss General Idea Vehicle, a long sheet of craft paper with silver edges showing a futuristic silver car, was also shown in the second gallery. On the opposite side of the room were several large-format photographs showing different moments of Miss General Idea events over the years. In a glass box, the dress given to Miss General Idea was also displayed. Accompanying the photos was an audio excerpt of AA Bronson explaining how the concept came to life and the group’s aim to criticize Canada for being too bureaucratic. In the center of the gallery was an island of four televisions standing as a cross (fig. 4). The island included pedestals presenting a monograph of all General Idea’s as well as several volumes of FILE Megazine gathered in compilations. This platform showed how central television was for General Idea as a true artistic medium. On each of the televisions were diverse features in which absurdist imagery merges with General Idea hosting a show in which they present themselves and explain their ideas.
Figure 4. Four televisions broadcasting the videos: Pilot, 1977, Loco, 1982, Shut the Fuck Up, 1985, and Test Tube, 1979, accompanied by The 1984 Spirit of Miss General Idea Vehicle, 1973. Photo: Peter Tijhuis. © Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
I felt like I did not have enough time to watch the entirety of the videos. I sat in front of each program for a few minutes, with a pervasive thought that I still had to digest more of the exhibition after. The first time I went to the exhibition I did not check the videos’ length, only the titles and what they were about. Only on my third visit did I see that they ranged from eight to 30 minutes. They were too long for my visit, and I was uncertain whether they were solely meant to be watched completely. When entering the gallery, the island with four televisions is captivating as an ensemble. It looks slightly monumental and intriguing because it is unusual to see four analogue televisions cornering each other.
Figure 5. Exhibition entrance including the work Green (Permanent) PLA©EBO, 1991. Photo: Peter Tijhuis. © Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Figure 6. Exhibition view General Idea, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2023. Photo: Peter Tijhuis. © Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
The third and last gallery was monumental in scale, in the number of works, and in general exhibition design; the first steps through the colorful, high-ceilinged space make clear that it is a labyrinth (fig. 6). There is no defined path, although the fake walls hint at certain directions. The rigidity of the white cube explodes into allow diagonals, irregular platforms, and flashy colors: the pièce de résistance.
It is impossible for me to describe every artwork presented in this space. Even after the third visit, I had not begun to grasp the corpus presented there, including works in various mediums: painting on canvas, paper, wood, prints, vinyl, flags, wallpaper design, product design, graphic design, typeface, sculpture, clothes, architectural plans, ropes, plushy toys, photographs, and even pasta. General Idea did it all. On my left were three large black flags with poodles on them; they were high up so they caught my eye. In between the flags were four large prints with the three members of General Idea presenting themselves in various contexts. A wall text states that self-portraits were an important tool for General idea to construct their identity.
Figure 7. Exhibition view General Idea, including AA Bronson, Untitled (For General Idea), 1998, set of three white Bertoia chairs with red/green/blue vinyl cushions, 2023. Photo: Peter Tijhuis. © Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
I decided to continue walking under the flags; the irregular walls went in diagonal directions, leading me to the corner of the gallery, where three chairs stood in a white space, facing a red wall (fig. 7). I observed the scene and contemplated what I thought to be a humorous installation named Untitled (For General Idea), made by AA Bronson in 1998. Because I am researching this artwork while writing this recollection of events, I have noticed that the central piece in this installation is the chairs; the rest varies according to the setting. In other exhibitions, only the chairs were shown; in the retrospective, a corner structure accompanied their facing of the red wall. This augmentation of the artwork for the Stedelijk makes me realize that the museum and the artist worked hand in hand for this retrospective. The boundaries between the format of the exhibition and the boundaries of the artwork merged. Furthermore, the process behind making the installation is evident: Its walls are detached from the walls of the building and attached by clearly visible thin polyester beams (fig. 7). It was almost as if I had just walked into a television studio, where the broadcasting is permanent and the walls are fake. I did not trace the manipulation of the space to either the artist or the curator during my visit; I was not aware that this artwork was specifically adapted to this exhibition.
I walked a few more steps and saw Canvas Weaving (1970), torn canvas lying on a platform that seems to hover over the ground. Further along in the exhibition are more elements from the Miss General Idea beauty pageants: Two mannequins with pyramidal dresses that cover their bodies up to the head stood on a platform. Around them were more architectural plans for the Miss General Idea Pageant Pavillion—the imaginary building that would host the beauty pageant in 1984. Adjacent to the architectural plans, miscellaneous artworks like a glass sculpture,[10] photographs, and a book were displayed in a glass box. This whole setup—the dresses, the architectural plans, and the smaller artworks—was shown in the breakthrough exhibition of the collective, organized by Camen Lamanna in Toronto in 1975. The exhibition, Going Thru The Notions, is one of the origins of the actual beauty pageant happening in 1984, so central to General Idea’s glamorous myth. An exhibition in the exhibition! And I am not even halfway through this gigantic hall. Behind each wall placed for this exhibition is a whole era of General Idea, with its different mediums and contexts. My brain was already tired after the second gallery, but I was now exhausted. I tried to find a place to sit down; there was too much to digest. Here is an exact transcript of my notes taken when I sat down:
I am hammered down. I feel squashed and tired. There is such a pesenteur (gravity, heaviness) in the experience of this exhibition. [ . . . ] The exhibition is Monumental, there is so much stuff happening & honestly, it’s really cool. I feel like I am in a Monty Python movie so it’s fun. But it’s also so heavy. I think it is my inability to focus. Is it a consequence of my age? Is it a consequence of my life?
The amount of self-blaming at the end of this extract is difficult to read and transcribe here, but it was certainly part of my experience. At that moment on the bench, I knew I had to go through the rest of the exhibition lightly because there was a lot to see, and I would not be able to digest it all the way I had with the rest. So I walked a bit faster and did not read all the texts and did not spend so much time on each artwork. The superficiality of my experience at the end of the exhibition paralleled the guilt that arose from the rushing—there was so much to grasp still! I was being a bad student, but I knew I would come back. Let’s just say that the guilt was also superficial.
Figure 8. General Idea, Test Pattern Wallpaper, 1989. The wallpaper stops halfway across the wall. Photo: Peter Tijhuis. © Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
In my second visit, I flew past the first two “white cube” galleries to focus on the final gallery and the works exhibited there. This time I noticed the wallpaper even more—for example, Test Pattern (1989), reminiscent of the test pattern used in early television when no programs were shown (fig. 8). More objects were presented and more unpredictable directions were proposed for me to follow, toward the final years of the collective that faced the dramatic effects of the sickness. The last works shown in the retrospective tackle topics of infection and the everyday life of individuals with AIDS. The work One Month of AZT (1991) shows the invasion of pills in the lives of Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal, who were diagnosed with the disease in 1989 and 1990, respectively. AA Bronson said, “Our life was full of pills, our apartment was full of pills [ . . . ] so they became part of our work.”[11] The exhibition showed that the collective kept its humor and its lightness, even in the hardest times. The text panel “FIN” tells me that the group dedicated themselves to the infection of other artists’ works, while gradually slowing down their activity as Partz and Zontal became sicker. Their deaths marked the end of the glamorous trio.
The General Idea exhibition at the Stedelijk is an example of the curator as an author. Some artworks in the main hall were augmented, modified, or adapted for the retrospective, so the role of the curator here extends beyond the ostensibly neutral organization of the display of artworks. The development of the exhibition as a synthesis of artworks instead of a display of separate objects took place in the 1980s,[12] which saw the appearance of thematic and ahistorical exhibitions unified by the mind of the curator,[13] giving this individual the status of maker or curator-author . These thematic exhibitions were later heavily criticized for the interchangeability of the artworks that were shown. The open-endedness caused by the subjectivity of the selection of the works led to the reduction of aesthetic autonomy for the artworks,[14] whose display became dependent on the vision and discourse of the curator.
However, the figure of the curator-author in the context of General Idea’s retrospective differs from the origins of the notion. Indeed, there is a unification of diverse periods and mediums in the three galleries, which merged into this colorful tracing of the art collective’s corpus. Yet the unity of the exhibition did not solely come from the subjective decisions of the curator, but from the structure imposed by the format of a retrospective. The exhibition is not open-ended: it is confined to the work of General Idea, and it follows a linear path, showing artworks chronologically. What was synthesized in this exhibition was the wide range of ideas that the art collective developed in their almost three-decade-long collaboration.
Useful for my research, Paul O’Neill uses General Idea as an example of artists that took on the role of curators to assert that the way art is displayed is as important as the art that is displayed.[15] For them, space was an element to be considered as part of their creative strategies,[16] and this retrospective at the Stedelijk was no exception:
We were at once theoricians, critics, artists, curators and bureaucrats, the penultimate shapeshifters. The metastructure of our artmaking included not only the studio, the artist and the artwork but also the museum [ . . . ] as a sort of armor or carapace we wore for invading the artworld.[17]
This intention of “invading the artworld” speaks to the critical gesture when artists curate and manipulate their own exhibitions as part of their art-making. The act of injecting such creativity in the process of exhibition-making allowed the artists of the 1980s and beyond to reject the formal conventions of the white cube and the institutional rules imposed on the display of art at the time.[18]
As a visitor, I was stimulated by the colorful arrangement of the retrospective’s main exhibition hall: It is surprising, exciting, impressive—even extraordinary. By allowing AA Bronson—the only remaining member of the collective—to manipulate the space as part of the artistic output, the Stedelijk extended its curatorial parameters to give freedom to the artist in his need to challenge the exhibition-making remit, as well as to impress the visitor and make the exhibition memorable.
At the beginning of “How About Pleasure?,” Jens Hoffmann, Jessica Morgan, and Dieter Roelstraete describe the difficulty of associating art as a vehicle of criticism with the notion of fun or entertainment.[19] The authors question whether it is possible to organize an exhibition that does not avoid entertainment while not falling into pure entertainment.[20]
I believe that the General Idea retrospective succeeded in this balance. In presenting the Canadian collective’s humorous, satirical, absurd work and promoting collaboration between AA Bronson and the exhibition curators, the Stedelijk curated a “fun” exhibition that tackled heavy subjects. The museum and General Idea, therefore, say yes to the association of entertainment and art, which also places the museum at a crossroads between the two sides of the dichotomy that researcher Whitaker argues: The museum is either a strenuous experience of learning and growth or a fair, a circus, a medium of popular entertainment.[21]
This balancing act entails a dual experience for visitors: I read about General Idea’s art life—their different ideas, their different fights—and I was saddened by their work on the tragic AIDS epidemic, and I was reflective upon the role of media and glamour in the art world that their work so often critiqued. In parallel to that, I was sometimes giggling, my curiosity was always stimulated, and I was truly impressed by the scale of the exhibition in the basement. The colors and the proportions kept me alert and occupied. There was always something to interact with, to read or to listen to. Nevertheless, my analysis would not be complete if I did not address an important issue that I faced at the Stedelijk. In addition to this equilibrium between education and entertainment, the scale of the exhibition weighed me down and unfortunately led to exhaustion.
In his book Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience, scholar John H. Falk formulates a model for analyzing the visitor experience.[22] He aims to understand the motivations of museum visitors and divides visitors into five profiles :[23]
I consider myself a professional/hobbyist, as I approached the exhibition knowing that I had to collect as much information as I could to provide the best analysis later on in my research. However, Falk mentions that visitors’ motivations and profiles can combine and vary.[24] When looking at the notes that I took concerning the sensation of heaviness halfway through the main hall, I realize that my wish to further specific professional needs was combined with an emotional involvement that can be found in the explorer or experience seeker type. Retrospectively, it seemed impossible for me to fulfill my main mission—collecting as much data as possible—while also satisfying personal curiosity through a challenging environment and also wishing to be exposed to what is important to our culture. What is absolutely certain is that if my goal had been to recharge, the approach that I took was not the right one.
Judging by the scale of the exhibition, the Stedelijk was aware that the visitor could not digest every element but would rather be selective. Falk writes:
All visitors must develop coping strategies for sorting through the cognitive assault of the museum such as how to make good choices of what to attend and what to ignore.[25]
Further, he writes:
Professionals /Hobbyists are among the most adept at navigating the museum. Visitors with this type of motivation typically rely heavily upon their prior visiting experience; they also rely on their extensive prior knowledge and interest in the subject matter to know how and where to focus their attention.[26]
The amount of information and sensations presented in these three galleries exceeded what I am used to experience in travelling or temporary exhibitions; I would describe this monumental retrospective as “cognitive assault.” Due to the research context in which I decided to visit the museum, I decided that it was necessary for me to try to collect everything from the exhibition. However, I was also holding the position of the explorer or the experience seeker as I was trying to grasp each artwork in its full emotional and intellectual depth. As a result of these two approaches—one necessitates a certain level of professional detachment; the other, a lot of energy —I was drained before the end of the exhibition. Having said that, it would be too easy to put the blame on my inability to navigate the exhibition adequately.
In her seminal publication Museum Legs, Whitaker specifically aims to understand this exhaustion.[27] In a chapter dedicated to boredom, she cites John Gaventa, who divides power into three dimensions, or three levels of influence of A on B[28]:
The third dynamic—A makes it impossible for B to complain about their situation because A controls their desires—is of interest here. Whitaker correlates this power dynamic with the situation of museum visitors, who find that apathy is the only way to complain about the oppression of the museum’s agenda.[29] The massive global expansion of museums and the rising number of museum visitors emphasizes this paradox, resulting in generalized cognitive dissonance: A lot of people go to the museum because they feel like they have to (A controlling B without proposing a forum for B to complain), yet they still feel “museum legs” or notable fatigue when exiting exhibitions.
Further, Whitaker cites writer Margaret Talbot Jackson, who blames the size of “monstrosities” like the Louvre in Paris or the Met in New York for causing an “overwhelming sense of fatigue.”[30] It seems fair to say that the scale of this exhibition shows that the Stedelijk is an institution that fits this description. Whitaker mentions that the construction of such museums or the transformation of buildings into such big art entities is not for visitors’ needs but for political or economic reasons,[31] citing the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) as projects that economically revitalized the cities where they are based.
Perhaps part of the tired heaviness I experienced in the Stedelijk as a visitor was because the exhibition was not entirely conceived for the needs of the visitor. It is clear that the exhibition was not curated for the visitor to dive deeply into each of the artworks, all the texts, and the complete audio tour in one visit. As a visitor, I felt that the exhibition was meant to impress me more than give me the right amount of information and sensations. Since there was too much to take in, I had to go quicker and digest less; I could see the big gallery in the corner of my eye while I was only at the beginning of the first video in the second gallery. The stress mounted: I had already abandoned the idea that I would be learning in joy and pleasure, because of the pressure of the quantity.
Ultimately, I feel the institution did not prioritize the depth at which visitors could interact with the work of General Idea. It may have prioritized the success of the exhibition or the necessity to include as many works of General Idea as possible to make a statement on the relationship between the artists and the museum. In other words, the Stedelijk might have prioritized its conception of grandeur and memorability over what is comfortable—moderate scale and digestibility. This is where the General Idea retrospective contradicts itself. While the work of the art collective is approachable and fun, it still requires attention and therefore energy to understand. Unfortunately, the accessibility inherent to General Idea’s works was contradicted by the Stedelijk’s curatorial, economic, and political priorities.
The curation of the General Idea retrospective could cause unwanted fatigue for the visitor. The visitor experience is deteriorated by the distance between the museums’ priorities and the visitor’s capacity. Art institutions may, for example, prioritize an economic agenda and organize blockbuster exhibitions in an effort to recover after the COVID slump; the visitor may be impressed by the grandiose exhibition but will also feel pressured by the scale—a feeling that museum professionals often overlook.
Removing art from the white cube context and promoting the use of exhibition-making as an artistic medium creates a strong aesthetic experience. Additionally, the curation of a multifarious body of work breaks potential monotony in the exhibition, as the visitor cannot predict what will be shown in the next galleries. Moreover, exhibition design affects the way a visitor moves through space. The General Idea retrospective is a clear example of the way modern art museums induce a dynamic flow for visitors through the construction of a maze in which diagonal walls propose unusual directions for the visitor.
However, there is a limit to these engagement efforts. It would be an exaggeration to urge anyone to read every little thing and to try to create meaning with every single artwork in every exhibition that they go to, but it is important to prioritize the relationship between the perception and the perceived instead of always trying to push for attraction through the impressive and the spectacular. As art historian Charlotte Klonk puts it :
The dream of the autonomous, self-directed spectator and the idea that the well-ordered museum display should present the visitor with a comprehensive panorama of cultural progression are no longer on offer.[33]
A counterargument to the conclusions drawn here is that the visitor’s experience should not only be considered in terms of pleasure and ease; education is a major part of curators’ responsibilities today, and learning entails a certain amount of effort. In that regard, curation also influences the visitor’s personal development; it has a transformative nature. Alfred Barr, the first director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, invented a model of museum education that is still considered to be the standard for the modern art museum[34]: the “Educated Consumer,” a visual approach paralleling that of department stores in addition to a well-written yet accessible exhibition catalog. Klonk states that low-hung paintings and the possibility for the audience to buy the shown artworks in the museum shops are key elements of Barr’s strategy, in which educational content is integrated into the exhibition instead of solely at the entry or after the exit. In this way, the MoMA relied on a didactic strategy of “winning people over”—the same way the booming advertisement industry of the time did. This intermingling of the commercial and the institutional is still evident today. Museums and galleries, even the public ones, are urged to perform well. Even public museums are under the pressure of the market and politics, leading to the curation of exhibitions driven by a definition of the visitor as consumer. Perceiving the visitor as a consumer leads an exhibition to perspire with commercial pressure as well as the dawning heaviness on the shoulders of those who have to experience the grandiosity of the exhibition.
Curation affects primarily the emotional state of the visitor. The selection of the artworks and the way they are framed in the exhibition influences visitors’ feelings, not only toward the artworks and the place they are shown but inward as well.
The case study findings make evident that curatorial decisions have a decisive impact on the amount of work visitors have to put in to interact with the artworks on display—to understand the exhibition content and to meaningfully engage with the works that are presented (as opposed to slipping into apathy). The visitor, when presented with a new object, or a new context, needs a set of concordant elements to achieve adequate understanding or engagement. Although individuals have their own sets of needs, the literature on curation shows that there are curatorial decisions that have undesirable effects; the recognition of the consequences of curatorial decisions has led to major reforms in the profession. The colorful, unpredictable curation of General Idea’s work at the Stedelijk Museum is, for example, arguably a result of art critic Brian O’Doherty’s criticism of the white cube.[35]
What, then, are the consequences of curatorial decisions on the experience of the visitor here? I have shown in my case study that a discrepancy between the institution’s priorities and the visitor’s capacity leads to a parasitic pressure on the visitor experience. The visitor, confronted with a massive amount of various works that approaches the definition of a “cognitive assault,” sees their emotional limits disregarded in favor of the spectacular. The very thing that causes potential discomfort to the visitor is the distance between curators’ priorities and the subjective reaction of the visitor to curatorial decisions; additional attention to the experience of the visitor would have made this exhibition more meaningful for everyone. In fact, the methodology of autoethnography enabled me to notice that the curatorial elements of the exhibition were at the origin of a discomfort that I would have usually explained away with my own incapacities or level of reflection. Writing this essay has shown me how much I usually short-circuit my outlook on an exhibition by blaming my own skills, my education, or even my personality. This research showed me how much guilt, impostor syndrome, or even shame comes with the experience of the art exhibition. As I am slightly shocked by this outlook on my relationship with art exhibitions, I believe that the methodology that I have used for my research and the analysis of the field’s literature have proven that such violence is felt by many—if not by most.
I therefore urge the profession to focus, before anything else, on the feelings of the visitor. I urge the development of a space where the visitor can describe as much as possible and as precisely as possible the way they feel in the art exhibition. I believe that the curators of today and tomorrow would benefit greatly from focusing on the quality and length of visitor testimonies. By diving into a long conversation with one visitor, curators could access an element that is missing in the superficiality of collecting many formatted reactions. This element, hidden in the depths of our minds, could be the key to improving the visitor experience.
Disclaimer
This text is an abridged and edited version of the author’s master’s thesis. The full-length original document can be shared by the author upon request.
Tom Polleau is an artist working at the intersection of music, visual languages, and writing. Polleau studied Art History at the University of Groningen, where his research centered on the relationship between art curation and the audiences of art institutions. With a strong interest in art criticism and the verbal articulation of different mediums, he has always maintained a deep commitment to mediation and the ways we communicate about intangible aspects of creation. In 2017, Polleau co-founded the publishing platform PLOR, which brings together his various interests. Based between Paris and Amsterdam, the platform serves as a hub for the production and release of music, text, and visual art.
[1] Simone Weil, “L’amour de Dieu et Le Malheur,” essay, in Attente de Dieu – Lettres Écrites Du 19 Janvier Au 26 Mai 1942. (Paris: Éditions Fayard, 1966), 67–75, 74.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Amy Whitaker, Museum Legs: Fatigue and Hope in the Face of Art (Tucson: Hol Art Books, 2009), 4.
[4] “GENERAL IDEA LARGEST EXHIBITION OVERVIEW IS COMING TO THE NETHERLANDS,” Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, February 21, 2023.
[5] “GENERAL IDEA LARGEST EXHIBITION OVERVIEW.”
[6] “General Idea | National Gallery of Canada,” National Gallery of Canada, accessed January 29, 2025.
[7] Ibid.
[8] “Compliments of Miss General Idea, General Idea,” Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, accessed July 2, 2023.
[9] General Idea, Missing Studies for the Pavillion #1 (V.B. Gowns), 1975, enamel-plated aluminum, steel chain, mannequin, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
[10] General Idea, Hand of the Spirit, 1974, plexiglass, Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
[11] Sarah E. K. Smith, “General Idea, One Year of AZT, 1991,” Art Canada Institute—Institut de l’art canadien, accessed July 2, 2023.
[12] Paul O’Neill, Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s) (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), 28.
[13] O’Neill, Culture of Curating.
[14] O’Neill, Culture of Curating, 30.
[15] O’Neill, Culture of Curating, 106.
[16] O’Neill, Culture of Curating.
[17] Fern Bayer, Christina Ritchie, and AA Bronson, “Myth as Parasite/Image as Virus: General Idea’s Bookshelf 1967–1975,” in The Search for the Spirit: General Idea: 1968–1975, ed. General Idea, Jorge Zontal, AA Bronson, and Felix Partz (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1997), 18–29, 19.
[18] Alison Green, When Artists Curate: Contemporary Art and the Exhibition as Medium (London: Reaktion, 2018).
[19] Jens Hoffmann, Jessica Morgan, and Dieter Roelstraete, “How About Pleasure?,” in Ten Fundamental Questions of Curating, ed. Jens Hoffmann (Milan: Mousse, 2013), 136–44.
[20] Hoffmann, Morgan, and Roelstraete, “How About Pleasure?”
[21] Amy Whitaker, Museum Legs: Fatigue and Hope in the Face of Art (Tucson: Hol Art Books, 2009), 29.
[22] John H. Falk, Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016).
[23] Falk, Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience, 35.
[24] Falk, Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience, 64, 96.
[25] Falk, Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience, 96.
[26] Falk, Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience.
[27] Whitaker, Museum Legs.
[28] John Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1982).
[29] Whitaker, Museum Legs, 136.
[30] Margaret Talbot Jackson, The Museum: A Manual of the Housing and Care of Art Collections (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1917), 8.
[31] Whitaker, Museum Legs, 89.
[32] “After the opening of MASS MoCA in 1998, the old mill town of sixteen thousand saw unemployment drop to 3.6 percent from a high of 25 percent several years before, saw vacancy rates in commercial rental property drop from 67.5 percent in 1995 to 13.8 percent, and saw commercial rents per square foot more than double.” from Amy Whitaker, Museum Legs: Fatigue and Hope in the Face of Art (Tucson, Ariz: Hol Art Books, 2009), 40.
[33] Charlotte Klonk, “The Spector as Educated Consumer,” in Spaces of Experience: Art Gallery Interiors from 1800 to 2000 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 134–71.
[34] Jens Hoffmann and Maria Lind, “Why Mediate Art?,” in Ten Fundamental Questions of Curating (Milan: Mousse, 2013), 79–86, 79; Klonk, “Spectator as Educated Consumer,” 134–71, 152.
[35] Brian O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 14.
