OASE111

Museums stage public encounters between visitors, objects and stories. This is not limited to a tour through the exhibition spaces, it starts already with monumental or ‘tresholdless’ entrances.

OASE 111 highlights historical and contemporary mechanisms and motifs of such staging. This shifts the focus in the discussion about museum architecture, long centered around (iconic) exteriors and (good) exhibition spaces. Current museological developments concern the whole configuration between city – or landscape – and gallery. Storage depots become visible or open to visitors, revising the boundaries between front and backstage. Streamed events find a stage in a fixed auditorium, a forgotten corner, or on a temporary platform.

The essays in this issue of OASE speculate on the importance of the architectonic staging of museum visits and activities, as institutions rethink their roles within an accelerating event culture. The scenes of the museum are not examined on the typological level of the museum building, but in a walk along meaningful places.