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Showing posts from February, 2016

Idiotic Didactics

The words chosen for the didactic panels in an exhibition set the ideological framework through which the visitor absorbs knowledge as they progress. Didactic texts are interpretive/educational texts related to an exhibition, usually written by exhibition curators, that are displayed on panels on exhibition gallery walls or as part of art object labels. Didactic panels orient exhibition-goers to a particular topic or theme. I recently attended Treasure Ships: Art in the Age of Spices in which a disturbingly retrograde word/idea was used in the didactic panels in one specific part of the exhibition. That word/idea was 'discover', and it is generally acknowledged now that the West did not 'discover' any other continent or culture. Each continent and culture existed independent of the West setting eyes on it, and the moment that Europeans first encountered other continents or cultures is now called 'first contact'. Unfortunately, the curators of Treasure Ship