Assignment 4: Looking into looking at museums :)
As mentioned in the previous chapter of Rose (2001) Visual Methodologies, discourse analysis I narrows its focus with visual images and written or spoken texts, it tends to focus on the production and rhetorical organization of visual and textual materials. However in chapter 7, “Discourse Analysis II” is much more concerned with discourse produced by, and their reiteration of particular institutions and their practices, and the production of particular human subjects. As discourse analysis remains central to deciphering power differences, “Discourse Analysis II” focuses on how institutions exert power on human subjects that are part of these institutions.
In the chapter, Rose(2001) exemplifies Jeremy Bentham’s work on the study of prisons, introducing concepts such as “Panopticon” and “Surveillance” to present discourse analysis II. A panopticon’s effect is to induce in subjects a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power, as the subjects are always seen without ever seeing, and the institution sees without ever being seen. This effect is thus coined by Foucault as “Surveillance”, as it is an efficient means in producing social order, and is prevalently observable in most modern capitalist societies.
Foucault also suggests that institutions exert power in two ways, through their apparatus and through their technologies. An institutional apparatus is the forms of power/knowledge which constitute the institution, such as the power endowed on police officers to enforce law, while institutional technologies are the practical techniques used to practice that power/knowledge, such as police cars and their fire-arms.
The types of sources that can be analyzed with discourse analysis II are as diverse as discourse analysis I, except that while using the sources and deciphering the texts/visuals/speech, the focus has to be on the institution studied, its apparatus and technologies. These sources could range from written texts that discuss the institution, interviews with the directors of the institution, visual images, architecture of the institution and observation of the people in these institutions.
The institution to be analyzed will be the famous Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It is an art museum dedicated to the works of Vincent Van Gogh and his contemporaries in Amsterdam. In 2015 it received 1.9 million visitors, featuring many of Vincent Van Gogh’s unsold works that were inherited by his nephew. The Van Gogh Museum has an online website for interested people to have a sneak peak of what will be in the museum, and also offers the availability of tickets online. At first glance of the web design, the website boasts the world’s largest collection of works by Van Gogh, then highlights new paintings that have returned to the Van Gogh museum that were previously stolen. The museum exerts its institutional apparatus of power that they are the experts in Van Gogh’s works, that these works are truly works of Van Gogh, despite being lost for 14 years. As mentioned in Rose (2001) the museum’s apparatus of power are always classified according to what are claimed to be ‘scientific’ or ‘objective’, whether they be drawn from notions of historical progress, scientific rationality or anthropological analysis, the museum still wields the regime of truth, being the most expert in the field its gallery is displaying.
On further physical inspection of the Van Gogh Museum, you can notice the entrance being unnecessarily high, while the first space that museumgoers will experience is a large, empty, naturally lit room. In this experience, the museum seems to be imposing a façade of an inspiring and uplifting, to induce the feeling of the eagerness to understand the copious amounts of culture to be experienced within the museum building.
The first level into the museum, most of Van Gogh’s self-portraits or portraits of others are hung around, then as the levels get higher, the paintings are classified based on period, to allow people to see the evolution in Van Gogh’s painting, directing people in a definite path till the end of the gallery. The internal layout and interior design dictates the way all museumgoers experience the gallery, which is definitely part of the narrative that the museum directors or curators have exerted on all of us.
Another interesting institution techonology observed in the Van Gogh Museum, and many other museums nowadays, is the availability of mobile devices to be rented and brought around the museums to explain the different paintings that are displayed. The museum(s) use such technology to ensure that the experience of the subject is what they want it to be, explaining every single detail of the painting without any other room for interpretation.
Most of Van Gogh’s works however were on display cases, but were not barricaded away to ensure that people cannot physically touch the paintings, with the exception to some paintings. They were all mounted on walls on eye level, side by side, till it leads you to the next room. An interesting observation was that despite no warning signs of touching the displays, nobody actually lifted a hand to attempt to touch the paintings. This I believe would be an apt example of surveillance that is well inculcated in the mindsets of museumgoers that displays are never meant to be touched, and that an invisible someone is watching these museumgoers turning them into what Foucault mentions as “docile bodies”, despite the museumgoers not being able to see them. Upon looking around, there are certainly surveillance cameras around the rooms.
Van Gogh Museum certainly exercises many of its institutional apparatuses and technologies as mentioned above, even its means of surveillance to exert power onto the behavior of its museumgoers can be evidently observed.
References:
Rose, G. (2001). Visual methodologies: An introduction to researching with visual materials. London: Sage.