Epis. 317: museums’ Invisible Labor, and how exhibition rooms are suspensions of common sense- Fernando Dominguez Rubio, part 3

<p>with <a href="https://fdrubio.ucsd.edu/">Fernando Domínguez Rubio</a>, author of <em><a href= "https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo51203276.html"> Still Life: Ecologies of the Modern Imagination at the Art Museum</a></em>, he talks about: Storage- how much it takes to maintain it; how museum curators put the longevity of artworks in the context of geological time, when thinking about ‘eternity,’ and how exhibition rooms in museums are effectively ICUs for the art- conditions must be monitored and controlled carefully, because humans, just by their organic natures, are an immediate threat to artworks’ longevity; how exhibition rooms in museums are highly mediated spaces by exhibition designers to control viewers’ experiences; the complex logistics and mimeographic labor that goes into the maintenance of artworks within the museum- where and whether they get loaned, get exhibited, etc.; Fernando’s own experience of violence when he first encountered contemporary art, because, as is the case for <em>most</em> individuals, he didn’t have the grammar for reading the exhibition room; how his working class background, and change in classes as an adult, has informed his focus on the invisible labor at the museum, as opposed to its ‘celebrities;’ and how exhibition spaces have been “conquered for a suspension of common sense.” </p>