2018_EJRNL_PP_ROBERT_J__FOSTER_1.pdf
Terbatas Noor Pujiati.,S.Sos
» ITB
Terbatas Noor Pujiati.,S.Sos
» ITB
This article documents some of the experimentation in museum installation designs for the
exhibition of non-Western objects during the 1930s and 1940s. This is a period in which
ethnographic artefacts were being displayed as artworks in natural history museums and in
which the exhibition of such objects in art museums drew on techniques characteristic of not
only natural history museums, but also commercial urban window displays (which were
themselves enjoying a period of dazzling exuberance). The article focuses on one collection of
Pacific Islands objects now housed at the Buffalo Museum of Science and on the installation
designs of Rene ?d’Harnoncourt and Trevor Thomas. It responds to the provocation of Alfred
Gell’s influential writings on art and agency, specifically, his conception of art as entrapment
and enchantment—his claim that artworks captivate, and thus exert a kind of (secondary)
agency on people (patients).