On the Meaning of Exhibitions – Exhibition Epistèmes in a Historical Perspective

Abstract

This essay aims at contributing to our understanding of the nature of exhibitions , namely how and why we make them, and what they-and the things in them-might symbolize. My focus will be on exhibitions of objects in classical museums of cultural history, archaeology and ethnology/ethnography. I will discuss how scientific epistemologies and discourses, as well as the history of ideas and ideologies, are reflected in the way museums and exhibitions are organized. Theoretically, I will lean on ideas of Michel Foucault presented in his t h i n g s b e i n g n a m e d a n d o r d e r e d What "is" an exhibition? An exhibition could be defined as a spatially or-ganised and visualised expression of thoughts, things and systems of knowledge , originating in the time of Enlightenment, and to a great extent based on the display of material objects. If, then, you ask people what the Enlightenment was all about, the answer would prehaps be: a cultural manifestation of rational thinking, scientific accuracy, observation and experiment, followed by classification in order to build universal sytems of knowledge. Diderot's Encyclopaedia would be given as a good example of this striving for universality. But rational systems, experiment and a striving for universality was nothing new-already Aristotle had this urge. Medieval and Renaissance thinkers had also been busy building universal systems, in their efforts to cast light on the order of Cosmos; to explain the Universe created by God. In