Exhibition Matters

Contemporary Displays and Exhibition-Making Practices

Pamela Bianchi, Wesley Meuris

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
• Year: 2026
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350575554
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture Criticism

'The artwork is no longer the integral part of the exhibition; to curate an exhibition is to curate an experience.'

Bridging the gap between curatorial practices and spatial display methods, this book considers the impact of exhibition design not only on the material structure of the exhibition but also on its narrative potential.

Exhibition Matters-an international collection of writings from academics and practitioners-explores this relationship between materiality and narrative, considering the contradictions inherent in exhibition design as strengths rather than limitations of a hybrid discipline.

Exploring various devices and approaches to spatial dramaturgy (including exhibiting nature and the more-than-human, the multi-disciplinarity of the design process, and pioneering decolonial narratives) alongside innovative ways of studying them, each chapter shows how to move beyond traditional boundaries of exhibition design and elevate the discipline to an art form in itself.

With case studies from Brazil to Italy, Turkey to the USA, this volume provides real-life examples and theoretical reflections on art, architecture and design, thus providing an interdisciplinary and accessible work – ideal for exhibition designers and curators, interior architects, and all those looking to construct spatial narratives beyond the sum of their parts.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• CONTENTS
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• CONTRIBUTORS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• 1 Displays Matter(s)
• 2 The Illusions of Levitation in Museum Displays
• 3 Sense and Sensibility Jermayne MacAgy’s Poetics of the Exhibition
• 4 In and Out of the Cabinet The Art of Exhibiting Nature and the Post-Anthropocene
• 5 Exhibition Adaptations Multimodal Narratives in Curatorial Practices
• 6 Reinventing the Contemporary Exhibition Space Novels, Domestic Space and Cinematic Cartography
• 7 Designing an Encounter Between the Materialities of Exhibition Design, Architecture and Curating
• 8 The Interrelationship Between Architecture and Exhibition Dominik Lengyel and Catherine Toulouse
• 9 Curating Adventure-Spaces1 Designing large digital heritage models where heritage is an active, open-ended process of meaning-making and the point cloud becomes not just a model of heritage but a space of heritage-making in its own right
• 10 Exhibition Designs as a Sculptural Practice A conversation with Wesley Meuris
• 11 Weaving Space, Choreographing the Gaze A conversation with Adrien Gardère
• INDEX