Listening on Display

Listening on Display provides an empirical investigation of the historically, culturally, and socially contingent ways in which artists, curators, and visitors relate to sounds in contemporary art exhibitions. Sounding artworks have appeared regularly in contemporary art exhibitions since the 1960s, yet scholars of art history, musicology, sound studies, and museum studies have long noted the experiential difficulties this development poses. They describe how sounds challenge the sensory hierarchy of the museum, how they disrupt the venerable silence of the white cube, or how they drown in the ambient noise of galleries. This book explores the listening experiences of artists, visitors, curators, and technicians in more than twenty exhibitions that have taken place at contemporary art museums, alternative art spaces, and other venues in Germany and the United States since the 1960s. Through archival research, visitor book analysis, interviews, and observations drawing on sensory ethnography, Semmerling brings together their ideas and ideals about aesthetic ambitions, sensory abilities, cultural conventions, and technological standards. In doing so, this book lays the groundwork for rethinking sound in exhibition spaces.