The Emancipatory Role of Exhibitionary Communication: Displays of Cast Iron Sculptures

• In Event: Liberation through the Exhibition and Display of Art?

Abstract

Non-academic exhibitions contributed to the history of the 19th century in an essential way as they “de-liberated” modern art. In that century, a new kind of exhibition was established: the display of craft and industry. Habermas’s concepts of the public sphere, communicative reason, deliberative democracy and discourse ethics beg the question: what kind of communication did spaces of exhibition create? I argue that non-academic exhibitions catalysed such debates in the public sphere and performed a key role in the formation of modern imaginaries as evidenced by the complex relations among the Austrian and Prussian interests and rivalries that framed both Bohemian and Silesian artistic production.

Author

• Tatiana Petrasova, Czech Academy of Sciences (Czech Republic)