ABSTRACT

Exhibiting Craft and Design: Transgressing the White Cube Paradigm, 1930–present investigates the ways that craft and design objects were collected, displayed, and interpreted throughout the second half of the twentieth century and in recent years. The case studies discussed in this volume explain the notion the neutral display space had worked with, challenged, distorted, or assisted in conveying the ideas of the exhibitions in question. In various ways the essays included in this volume analyse and investigate strategies to facilitate interaction amongst craft and design objects, their audiences, exhibiting bodies, and the makers. Using both historical examples from the middle of the twentieth century and contemporary trends, the authors create a dialogue that investigates the different uses of and challenges to the White Cube paradigm of space organization.

chapter 1|21 pages

Introduction

The persistence of the White Cube paradigm

chapter 3|17 pages

Crafting Koreanness

How Korean national identity became interwoven with the handmade object in the twentieth century

chapter 4|20 pages

Within the guilded cage

chapter 6|18 pages

Quiet revolution

Contemporary curatorial approaches to ceramics in the White Cube

chapter 7|19 pages

Jewellery can be worn too

chapter 8|14 pages

Store/museum

chapter 9|20 pages

‘I could have visited Ikea for free’

Design museums and a complicated relationship with commerce

chapter 10|21 pages

Outside the White Cube

chapter 11|12 pages

Afterword

Breaking free?