ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that exhibitions can work effectively as research. That is, exhibition may work not only as a way of communicating research of the past, but can create a research surplus. However, we should be careful not to copy research as it is conducted outside the exhibition as the surplus created through exhibitions is closely related to the particular ways of collaborating and working through objects and space that are specific to exhibition making.
The chapter goes through literature on exhibitions as research and presents the chapters of the book, divided into three sub-themes: cross-disciplinary collaboration, sensing knowledge and collaboration with audiences.
In conclusion the chapter draws on Walter Benjamin in arguing that the role of the exhibition is to “detach knowledge from the limitations of specialism” (Benjamin in Korff, Gottfried, (1999), Exhibitions as constructed mnemonic worlds. In: Frank R. Wehrner, ed., Hans-Dieter Werner: In-Between. Exhibition Architecture. Stuttgart: Edition Axel Menges). In this sense, the role of exhibitions in knowledge making rests on the challenges it poses it’s makers to transgress what they consider their expertise and engage in making knowledge practical and material. Doing so, the exhibition can act as a platform for identifying new and unconsidered questions than can open for new research.
