The Art Museum

Oberhardt, Suzanne. (2000). Frames within frames. The art museum as cultural artifact. (pp.1-38). NY: Peter Lang.

Oberhardt sees art museum as an artifact that resides in popular culture and takes Foucauldian discourse as its analytical framework. In this first chapter, in particular, she lays out her theorerical and methodological backgrounds through reviewing critical theories, Gramsci's theory of hegemony, Foucault's approach to cultural institution that produces subjectivities discursively and normalizes them, and critical pedagogy, etc.

While redefining popular culture, she criticizes Frankfurt theorians' eliticism that viewed mass culture as deception, which is aligned with Plato's disdain for art in general. Conversely, she argues, "Consumer-oriented text of mass culture are rich archives--they carry a range of discourses which permeate reading and viewing cole's livmmunities. These discourses are the resources used in constructing the everyday realities of all people's lives" (p.35). Her emphasis lays on consumers' their own meaning making, which may not be the same as intended by the museum curators or art creators. [I argue, however, this meaning making process itself is not free from power dynamics that intermingle with the system of art making and displaying.]