Pavey, Ellen;
(2024)
Making the Invisible Visible in the Contemporary Art
Museum.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
This thesis explores the communication of collection care work in the art museum. I take Tate as a single case study and apply qualitative methods to present a detailed account that documents the impact of surfacing this often-hidden work on the museum and young adults. It is the fundamental nature of collection care work as networked, intersubjective and knowledge producing that I argue is invisible to outsiders. The overarching aim of the project is to explore the link between increased visibility and the potential to create a more inclusive and equitable museum. To do this I apply Hall’s notion of encoding and decoding as an umbrella theory that organises the research into two phases. To understand the risks and benefits involved in the encoding process I use Bourdieu and DiMaggio’s concept of field and capital interwoven with more recent scholarship that argues for the integration of emotions in the analysis of insitutional structures. With regards to decoding, I analyse the accounts of young adults involved in career building activities at Tate through the lens of sociocultural learning theories and notions of cultural capital. I conclude by arguing that visibility should be considered a central component in cultural capital transactions across the institution and the organisational field, and I position Tate as the product of competing relationships that transform the institution into an ‘anxious museum’. This in turn shapes the production of meaning. Meanwhile young adults read the materials Tate produces in oppositional and negotiated ways that are informed by their existing relationships with Tate, their personal interests, and their perceptions of the institution’s anxieties. Ultimately, ‘making the invisible visible’ is a highly charged undertaking that cannot create a more equitable museum in and of itself but could offer a blueprint for a more permeable and inclusive institution.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Making the Invisible Visible in the Contemporary Art Museum |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2024. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Institute of Archaeology |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10196234 |
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