Museum Mediation of Art in the "White Cube"

Discussions about the fundamental role of the art museum are mainly related to different understandings of the nature of art-its autonomy or instrumentality, and lead to the polarization between the relationship of "to see" (exhibition) and "to know" (the meaning of the exhibited). Advocating the latter in the context of demonstrating the social value of the art museum or participating in art leads to the need for mediation, i.e. educating visitors about the importance and meaning of artworks. However, looking at mediation not through the prism of education but of communication, and considering all elements of the exhibition-from the space to the digital media-this paper tries to emphasise the fact that the art museum has always reflected the social value and participation in art, primarily through its longest-running exhibition mode, the so-called "white cube". The paper presents the interrelations of the three principles of mediation in the "white cube" from the 1930s to the present, which include the paradigms of researching art and the aesthetic experience that form the basis of museum practice, exhibition media and cultural policy paradigms. Accordingly, the paper proposes an analysis of mediation as a tool for determining the relationships that museums establish between art and visitors, and thus also their social role. In the first half of the 20th century, the exhibition space shaped according to the "white cube" model was dominated by the discipline of art history and the curatorial knowledge, on the basis of which the best, selected works of art are communicated through their placement in space. The museum's experience of art is based on formal aesthetics and conditioned by the knowledge of art. The authority and cultural power of a museum institution is manifested in communication with those who have an artistic background or understand museum codes. In this context, discursive mediation is born as an instrument of democratising museums and culture, and realized as a transfer of artistic knowledge to those who do not possess it, primarily through texts and audio recordings. Due to the expansion of the interpretation paradigm, not only the broader context of artworks, but also the specific characteristics of visitors have become important for the aesthetic experience. Art discourses have expanded from historical-artistic to cultural-historical, and even to popular themes that connect artworks with the visitors' interests, identities and styles of learning, thus realizing the museum as a place of cultural democracy that expands the opportunities for accessibility and participation, even in the sense of exhibiting visitors' interpretations. Here digital media constitute a significant medium that enables a wide range of interpretive approaches and active participation, without violating the standard form of the "white cube". With the paradigm shift toward the affect, mediation in the art museum ceases to be tied to discourse, but uses media to allow for embodied experience of art and aesthetic experience of space associated with the aesthetic and experiential economy. Following these changes, the paper highlights the manners of mutual connections between the three aspects of exhibition mediation, and proposes mediation analysis as a tool for determining the museum's position in relation to the profession, the visitors, and the wider role in the society.