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UNM Art Museum

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As of recently, I had visited the UNM Art Museum to explore their various exhibits. There were four art exhibits at this art museum; Mata Ortiz, The 22nd Annual Juried Graduate Exhibition, Remnants: Photographs From the Disfarmer Studio, and Lightning Speak. Each exhibit portrayed similar characteristics, such as color, seating, and physical space. As with each art gallery, white is the primary neutral color used to display each piece. The white posts used to display certain pieces and walls gave a very modern and clean feel to the museum. As for seating, I was much too immersed into the art pieces to notice any seating areas during each exhibit. But I’m quite certain there weren’t any in most of them except for The 22nd Annual Juried Graduate …show more content…

In Duncan’s book “The Art Museum as a Ritual” he explains the meaning behind art museums, and how they are like rituals and are “complex entities in which both art and architecture are parts of a larger whole.” In most ways, Duncan is correct about art museums being like rituals. They are typically isolated, quiet, and have strict rules on what you are allowed to bring and do within the museum. Each piece is displayed beautiful in its own exclusive space. They also highly protect their pieces and maintain them on a daily. Most people don’t typically go to museums for a “fun experience” rather they go for a more rich and enlightening experience; almost something you can’t replicate elsewhere because atmosphere and ambience is so important. The reason why I bring up atmosphere and ambience is to connect it to Duncan’s claim that “art museums appear as environments structured around specific ritual scenario.” Ambience and atmosphere are important aspects to museums in order to feel like rituals. The atmosphere is museums often feel like a “pseudo-sacred kind of place filled with a ritual-like atmosphere.” Duncan claims that “it is, in my view, precisely the complexity of the art museum - its existence as a profoundly symbolic cultural object as well as a social, political, and ideological instrument - that makes the notion of the museum as ritual so attractive,” which means he believes that museums act as a cultural object for social and political means. He believes that art museums “constitute one of those sites in which politically organized and socially institutionalized power most avidly seeks to realize its desire to appear as beautiful, natural, and legitimate.” They are incredibly excellent places to study the history of cultural forms. He believes they aren’t ritual structures, but rather they stand “as ritual structures,” since they contain vast

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