Carol Duncan's The Art Museum As Ritual

This reading was interesting. Duncan begins by comparing museums to religious/ceremonial places. “Eventually, the separation of church and state would become law.” Museums are secular places – “the secular truth became the authoritative truth.” And churches (and the like) are religious places – “religion…kept its authority only for voluntary believers.”  Secular truth is known to be rational and verifiable à “objective knowledge.” Duncan continues, describing the differences between secular and religious entities. She says that in the secular/religious terms of our culture, ‘ritual’ and ‘museums’ are antithetical. Then she notes an argument that there is disguised ritual content in secular ceremonies. She argues the ritual character of the museum experience in terms of the kind of attention one brings to it and the special quality of its time and space. “Museums resemble older ritual sites not so much because of their specific architectural references but because they, too, are settings for rituals. I thought it was a good example of this when she pointed out how one is expected to behave with certain decorum in both museums and religious places. She examines the term “Liminality” in terms of the kind of attention we bring to art museums. Throughout her argument, Duncan uses historical figures as examples. Turner and Schmidt are just two such examples. “Others, too, have described art museums as sites which enable individuals to achieve liminal experience- to move beyond the psychic constraints of mundane existence, step out of time, and attain new, larger perspective.” Then she moves onto the element of performance. In museums, it is the visitors who enact the ritual. Then the ritual experience as it has a purpose, an end. It is seen as transformative. And finally she looks as art museum objects. It was interesting to hear that the concept of putting objects in settings designated for contemplation is relatively new. It was a newly discovered aspect of the “visual experience”. The reading goes on to discuss a lot of tension between aesthetics and museums. “In philosophy, liminality became specified as the aesthetic experience, a moment of moral and rational disengagement that leads to or produces some kind of revelation or transformation.” There was and still is a lot of controversy over aesthetics verses purpose, etc. Duncan closes with the invitation to take Germain Bazin’s argument even further: “in the liminal space of the museum, everything-and sometimes anything- may become art, including fire extinguishers, thermostats, and humidity gauges…