Questioning Exhibit Display

This book presents the first scientific outcomes of a project aimed at scrutinizing the forms and meanings of exhibition systems from the perspective of display. Due to its inherently cross-disciplinary nature, the display device is a negotiation ground resistant to a univocal approach, transforming it into a strategic agent of crisis for historical, theoretical, and project disciplines.

The objective of this book is to reassess the concept of "expographie" as a suitable cross-disciplinarity, by employing the investigative approach of display to intersect various perspectives. Alongside historical and theoretical disciplines, the fields of design, architecture, and exhibit design, are involved.

Starting from case studies and methodological inquiries, the essays in this volume revolve around four thematic constellations - Experience, Memory, Engagement, Display in action - where pivotal and, in our view, open points of the display debate converge.

With the contributions of Roberta Albiero, Fabrizia Bandi, Giampiero Bosoni, Fiorella Bulegato, Francesca Castellani, Bernadette Dufrêne, Mario Farina, Antonella Gallo, Jérôme Glicenstein, Carlo Grassi, Anna Mazzanti, Angela Mengoni, Stefano Mudu, Roberto Pinto, Paul Rasse, Clarissa Ricci, Camilla Salvaneschi, Marco Scotti, Alessandra Vaccari, Angela Vettese, Francesca Zanella, Stefania Zuliani.

Francesca Castellani is a professor of contemporary art history at the University Iuav of Venice and in the PhD program in the History of Arts in Venice. Her research interests focus on the history of European art of the 19th and 20th centuries, including its cultural and projective dimensions such as Orientalism, Revival, the historiographical construction of Impressionism, and intersections between art and literature. Since 1995, her research has especially focused on the history of the Venice Biennale, examining it as a paradigm for the history of exhibitions. She coordinates the research group BiTES-Biennial Theories & Stories.

Jérôme Glicenstein is a professor in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Paris 8 and editor in chief of the journal "Marges" (PUV). He is the author of "L'Art: une histoire d'expositions" (PUF, 2009), "L'Art contemporain entre les lignes" (PUF, 2013), "L'invention du curateur" (PUF, 2015). He co-edited with Bernadette Dufrêne the collective work "Histoire(s) d'exposition(s) / Exhibitions' Stories" (Hermann, 2016).

Francesca Zanella, Associate Professor of History of Contemporary Art, teaches History of Architecture at the University of Modena and Reggio. Member of the Scientific Committee of CSAC, University of Parma, which she directed from 2015 to 2020, and member of the Scientific Committee of MoRE Museum of unrealized projects. She is member of the IUAV, Venice research group Bites.