ABSTRACT
Most discussions of the meanings of exhibitions of contemporary art minimize the importance of the location and type of architectural space in which the exhibition is held. It is assumed that listing the venue at the top of an article or review as part of a title or header or referring briefly to location as an aside in initial or closing paragraphs is sufficient to convey the significance of the space and its relation to what is being shown. With the exception of Brian O’Doherty’s The White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space,1 extended discussions of the architectural spaces in which exhibitions of contemporary art are located occur in books or articles on museums, galleries, collectors, architects and exhibition design or when the exhibition venue is sufficiently different from the norm to merit extensive description and analysis. Unless the exhibition is site-specific,2 these architectural portraits tend to separate container from contained.
