ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on The Lowry, an arts centre in Salford, North West England close to the major city of Manchester. It considers the extent to which The Lowry both problematizes the debate in its staging of auratic spectatorship the viewer before the painting with the production of its experience as post-auratic: accessible and collective. The fact that Lowry's work was never the raison d'tre for the centre, although it has made use of its local associations to its benefit, is apparent in Clelland's review of the space itself. The urban crowd, the experience of modern industrial urban experience itself, as described in the work of Marx and Simmel, is in many ways captured in Lowry's art. Baudrillard might argue it marks the era of theme-park, 'disneyfied' football just as much as The Lowry marks the moment of theme-park 'disneyfied' 'culture'.
