How the White Cube Came to Dominate the Art World

And when does this cleansing process, leading us to the idea of the gallery as ‘white cube’, begin?

*Charlotte Klonk

*The disciplining began at an early stage with the design of reverential entrance halls and exhibition rooms. They were sumptuously decorated, but weren’t intended to distract from viewing the art.

You explain that the white cube was initially only a variance of a rich tradition of differently coloured rooms in museums around 1900.

Then in the 1920s discussions in which white received connotations of infinite space started to emerge, mainly among Constructivist artists and architects. This coincided with temporary exhibitions becoming increasingly important in the museum, and with them the moveable partition wall and flexible groundplan.

What is important in my opinion is that the room is honest, so there is no patronising.

*Niklas Maak

*When is a room honest?

*Charlotte Klonk

*Well, as soon as what is being aimed for becomes obvious to the viewer. What remains too subliminal, for example, are the colour nuances in the new display of the collection in the Nationalgalerie. If visitors a

Cognitive psychology is one of those fields of discussion which was, at least historically, of great importance for the exhibition of art. The first director of the National Gallery in London, Charles Eastlake, preferred hanging paintings against a background of red material, something he introduced in the middle of the nineteenth century (previous