A exposição como “obra de arte total”: O MUDE como caso de estudo

• Main Authors: Bárbara Coutinho, Ana Tostões
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade de Évora 2015-02-01
• Series: Midas: Museus e Estudos Interdisciplinares
• Subjects: gesamtkunstwerk; Museu do Design e da Moda - Coleção Francisco Capelo; museum architecture; museum history
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/midas/694

Since the beginning of the twentieth century several artists have been working on the exhibition as an installation and taking the exhibition space as a work in itself. Nowadays, with increasingly blurred boundaries between content (object) and container (space) the exhibition is conceived as an atmosphere or choreography. The discourse is less closed, hierarchical, definitive and conclusive, while exhibition space stresses its performative, site-specific, experimental and theatrical nature. This curatorial approach demands an active role from visitors and encourages them to construct their own meaning and knowledge, privileging their autonomy. In this context, we put the hypothesis of exhibition approaches the concept of a Total Work of Art (Gesamtkunstwerk) with objects, space and public as equally active players to the final result. We take MUDE - Museu do Design e da Moda, Coleção Francisco Capelo (Lisbon) as a case study and consider how its design as a work in progress and how the ruin as been embraced as an exhibition content and as an important aspect for the museological program. We also analyse the role played by the research on the building’s history (made in an operative perspective) for the museological strategy and the building rehabilitation program. Another aim is to understand the relation between MUDE’s exhibition display and the Umberto Eco's opera aperta ideal in order to evaluate MUDE’s practical in the new museological and curatorial paths.