Nasher Museum of Art

  • The uncertain museum (detail)

    Dancer interacting with Olafur Elíasson’s The uncertain museum, (detail), 2004. Steel, painted wooden floor, wire, motors, glass/mirror disks, spotlight, projection foil; 116 x 175 inches (294.6 x 444.5 cm). Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC, USA. Museum purchase with additional funds provided by Blake Byrne, T’57; Monica M. and Richard D. Segal; Mr. and Mrs. J. Tomilson Hill; and Bill and Ruth True; 2006.4.1. © Olafur Eliasson. Photo by J Caldwell.

  • The uncertain museum

    Olafur Elíasson, The uncertain museum, 2004. Steel, painted wooden floor, wire, motors, glass/mirror disks, spotlight, projection foil; 116 x 175 inches (294.6 x 444.5 cm). Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC, USA. Museum purchase with additional funds provided by Blake Byrne, T’57; Monica M. and Richard D. Segal; Mr. and Mrs. J. Tomilson Hill; and Bill and Ruth True; 2006.4.1. © Olafur Eliasson. Photo by Peter Paul Geoffrion.

  • 2010_18_1_v5_700

    Fred Wilson, Colonial Collection, 1990. Mixed media, 48 3/4 x 86 1/2 x 26 3/4 inches (123.8 x 219.7 x 67.9 cm). Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC, USA. Museum purchase, 2010.18.1. © Fred Wilson. Courtesy Pace Gallery. Photo by Peter Paul Geoffrion.

  • 1995_15_1_v2_700

    Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin, Portrait of an Unknown Person or Peter Carl Faberge’s Nightmare, 1990. Plaster, paint, wood, sand, fabric, metal; approx.144 x 204 x 156 inches (365.8 x 518.2 x 396.2 cm). Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC, USA. Museum purchase, 1995.15.1. © Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin.

Background

What is an installation? What is installation art? “Installation” initially described how an exhibition was arranged. Then, artworks that used the entire gallery space were labeled “installation art.”

Installation art inhabits a space. It may surround you, or invite you to enter into it or physically interact with it. It is hybrid, often incorporating multiple mediums and/or everyday objects, and appealing to multiple senses. Installation art challenges viewers to consider the work’s context by calling attention to the place where it is exhibited, to its production, presentation, and reception. Usually temporary and occasionally site-specific (created for a given location), an installation may be ephemeral, only exhibited once, or collected, stored, and re-exhibited. Installation art disrupts the boundaries and categories that have traditionally defined art. Artists create installations to explore perceptual phenomena; the politics and pluralism of identity; the interaction between architectural settings, environmental sites, everyday objects, and people; and more.

How do you look at installation art?

“Installation”: the state of being installed. An installation exists in a particular space at a specific time for a given duration of time.

  • Where is the installation? (List the room, the gallery, the museum, the city, the state, the country, the current date, the date of the installation.) Is it site-specific (made for this space)?
  • How do the location and/or time (the current date, the installation’s date, and the installation’s duration) contribute meaning?
  • How long is it on display? Can it be displayed again in the future?

Enter into and begin to interact with the installation.

  • What do you see, hear, smell, and/or feel? (Stand still. Walk around. Look from far away. Look up close. Look straight on. Look out of your peripheral vision.) How do light, color, texture, and sound affect your experience of the installation and the space?
  • How does the installation transform you? In what ways does the installation’s physicality affect the way you perceive your own body and presence? How do you sense the passage of time? (Are you consciously aware of your body as an object in space? What does it mean to be an object?)
  • How does your physical presence affect the installation? (Does the installation change in response to your movement? Are you part of the installation?)
  • What is the physical relationship between the installation, the gallery space, and the museum’s architecture? (Where and how is the installation displayed within the room? Does the installation call your attention to the architecture and/or transform it? What is the scale?)
  • How does the presence of other visitors affect the installation? How does their presence affect your experience of and/or interaction with the installation? How does your presence affect other visitors? Do you interact with other visitors?Are you aware of yourself as a social being?

Ask contextual questions about social, historical, political, or economic issues.

  • What media and/or objects are used? Do you normally see these media and objects together and/or in a museum? Where are they typically found and what is their significance outside of the museum? What do the media and objects mean on their own? What changes when they are combined? What meaning does the museum setting contribute to the installation and the media and objects that comprise it?
  • How does the title and/or information about the artist help (or not) to enhance your understanding of what you see and perceive?
  • How do you interpret the meaning of the installation? What questions would you like to know more about?

Want to know more?

A Brief History

The history of installation art is contested. Some scholars argue that installation art has roots in Richard Wagner’s concept of a Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art). Others contend that it developed out of the 19th century world’s fairs; the early 20th century avant-gardes’ explorations of the connections between painting, sculpture, and architecture; or the “dematerialization of the art object” in the 1960s and 1970s with Minimalism and Conceptualism. Still other scholars posit that installation arose in the first few decades of the 20th century out of artists’ simultaneous use of multiple mediums, like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque’s Cubist collages, Kurt Schwitters’ Merz assemblages, and various installations by Marcel Duchamp. Regardless, many artists began creating installations and environments around the 1960s. This was the same period in which artists also started resisting commercial art galleries by exhibiting in alternative spaces. Since the 1990s, installation art has become increasingly institutionalized.

Terminology

Sometimes an installation may be called an “environment.” The latter term generally implies that the audience enters into and becomes part of the artwork. This is not true of all installations.

Phenomenology and Perception

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) – the “father” of phenomenology. For a summary of his work, see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/husserl/.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) – influential French phenomenological philosopher and author of Phenomenology of Perception (1945). For a summary of his work, see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/merleau-ponty/

Virtual Realities and Interactive Environments at Duke

Duke’s Information Science + Information Studies (ISIS)

Duke Immersive Virtual Environment (DiVE)

Works in the Nasher’s Collection

Exhibitions

Area 919: Artists in the Triangle (Jan. 24 – April 12, 2015)

Another Look: Appropriation in Art (Dec. 14, 2013 – June 29, 2014)

Pedro Lasch, Susan Harbage Page and Yinka Shonibare (July 20 – Dec. 1, 2013)

Exposing the Gaze: Gender and Sexuality in Art (Jan. 26 – June 16, 2013)

Olafur Eliasson: The Uncertain Museum (July 19, 2012 – Sept. 30, 2012)

A Selection of Women Artists from the Nasher Museum’s Collection (July 23 – Dec. 4, 2011)

Body of Christ (Jan. 27 – Aug. 21, 2011)

Bibliography

Bishop, Claire. Installation Art: A Critical History. New York: Routledge, 2005.

Coulter-Smith, Graham. Deconstructing Installation Art: Fine Art and Media Art, 1986-2006. CASIAD Publishing, 2006. Online book: http://www.installationart.net/.

De Oliveira, Nicolas, Nicola Oxley, and Michael Petry. Installation Art in the New Millennium: The Empire of the Senses. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2003.

Elwes, Catherine. Installation and the Moving Image. London: Wallflower Press, 2015.

Ferriani, Barbara and Marina Pugliese. Ephemeral Monuments: History and Conservation of Installation Art. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 2013.

Finger, Anke, and Danielle Follett, eds. The Aesthetics of the Total Artwork: On Borders and Fragments. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.

Fried, Michael. “Art and Objecthood.” In Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. (Originally published in 1967.)

González, Jennifer A. Subject to Display: Reframing Race in Contemporary Installation Art. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008.

Kaprow, Allan. Assemblage, Environments & Happenings. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1966.

Koss, Juliet. Modernism after Wagner. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

Kwon, Miwon. One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2004.

Lippard, Lucy. Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972. New York: Praeger, 1973.

Mondloch, Kate. Screens: Viewing Media Installation Art. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

Peterson, Anne Ring. Installation Art: Between Image and Stage. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2015.

Reiss, Julie H. From Margin to Center: The Spaces of Installation Art. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999.

Rosenthal, Mark. Understanding Installation Art: From Duchamp to Holzer. Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2003.

Sandu Publishing. Installation Art Now. Berkeley: Gingko Press, 2013.

Spring, Jenny Moussa, ed. Unexpected Art: Serendipitous Installations, Site-specific Works, and Surprising Interventions. San Francisco: Chronicle, 2015.

Stiles, Kristine. “I/Eye/Oculus: Performance, Installation and Video.” In Themes in Contemporary Art, edited by Gill Perry and Paul Wood, 183-230. London: Yale University Press, in association with The Open University, 2004.

Suderberg, Erika, ed. Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.

Van Mechelen, Marga. Art at Large: Through Performance and Installation Art. Arnhem: ArtEZ, 2013.

Viction:ary. Overs!ze: Mega Art & Installations. Hong Kong: Viction:ary, 2013.