Exhibition Histories and Futures: The Importance of Participation and Audiences

Why are histories of exhibitions, rather than histories of art, of particular importance for new media art? As Mary Anne Staniszewski pointed out in 1998, the history of exhibition installations is one particularly badly served by art histories, to the point of being culturally “repressed.” She identifies several interconnected institutional methods and hierarchies that contribute to this historical void, among them a relegation of exhibition installation to low‐status “design,” and a tradition of installation photographs—if they are published at all—being stylishly uncluttered by audiences (1998, xxi, xxiii). This chapter aims to address histories of both new media art exhibitions and non‐new media exhibitions, involving installation art and site‐specific art, and placing a particular emphasis on interactive and participatory art