People-ing the gallery with Diane Arbus

I recently visited the wonderful exhibition of photographs by Diane Arbus (In the Beginning) at the Hayward Gallery. It is beautifully twinned with a show of work by Kader Attia (The Museum of Emotion) bringing out significant critical questions about choice and agency in whose image or story ends up in a museum and why. I recommend anyone who can to visit these in their final week.

The Diane Arbus is displayed with the exhibition space filled with tall columns, like an architectural forest, so that each photograph is on its own. With the columns staggered in rows so that visitors can choose their own path around the space, photographs are brought into a compelling range of dialogues with each other. Arbus's work is portraiture in situ, capturing the people around her in New York City - midtown shoppers, children, and couples, circus performers, tattooed men, female impersonators, museum mannequins. I was struck by the variety of titles that she chose to give the works, some simply descriptive, some with names, some with a wry sense of humour or commentary that inflects a different view into the image.

What struck me most, however, was how the exhibition design brought visitors into the display, so that visual dialogues were set up between the photographs and the people looking at them. I found myself examining the expressions, interactions, gestures and clothes of my fellow visitors as much as of Arbus's sitters, wondering what wry title might make me look differently at their story. I was reminded of a previous exhibition, at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Silent Partners, that looked at the history of artists using mannequins, and which I enjoyed for the way it made me think about my own body in the exhibition space.

On another recent visit to the Pierre Bonnard (The Colour of Memory) exhibition at the Tate, I became fascinated by how the colours worn by visitors interacted with the paintings, and each other: a bright purple coat here, a russet waistcoat there, turning the exhibition floor too into a dialogue of rich subtle colours. My mother always remembers going to see an exhibition of late Rothko paintings, and being infuriated by the bright turquoise waterproof of another visitor, which competed with the sombre hues of the paintings. 

I increasingly find myself looking as much at visitors as works in museums. Partly I'm interested in how they're interacting, what is engaging them or not, how they navigate and seem comfortable in gallery spaces. But, I also find that I think differently about objects when they're in dialogue with visitors. The Arbus brought home to me how important those visual interactions are, and what quiet enjoyment can be gleaned from the people in the gallery, as well as the people on the walls.