Having grown up around the arts, it would be difficult for me not to be critical about the curation of a show. While most people may enter a gallery and solely see the art pieces themselves, I instinctually take note of the way the art was hung, how the lighting affects each work, and the placement of the works in comparison to one another. All these components are meant to appear effortless as the entire ambiance of space affects the way art is consumed by the viewer. Any variation from the “white cube” notion of exhibition space, therefore, alters the consumption of the art, ideally to suit the curators’ and artists’ intent. 

Alexander Gray Associates at 520 West 26th Street, the first gallery we located, exemplifies the “white cube” idea of a gallery space. All the walls, except one, are polished white with small pieces of work hanging and a few pieces of sculpture in the middle of the room. One wall, however, has an abstraction of buildings stenciled onto it directly. The wall itself seems to be an enlarged version of the small piece “Insomnia (10)” framed on the wall to the left of the “Insomnia (10) Wall Drawing”.  There is an ease of cohesiveness in the space due to the uniform placement of the works as well as the fact that there is solely one artist Teresa Burga on display. While the white, clean appearance lends to attracting the viewer to the art in that it doesn’t distract him or her, enlarging “Insomnia (10)” onto the actual gallery wall has the same effect. Personally, I quickly scanned the smaller pieces on the wall before making my way towards “Insomnia (10) Wall Drawing”, and thereafter went back to each of the smaller pieces once realizing it had been duplicated. Therefore, the inclusion of the larger piece served to get the viewer to consider how all the works work together. Overall, the “white cube” asserts that the art is solely meant to interact with the art, thus creating a semblance of cohesiveness. 

Next, the group and I entered a very different space at 514 West 26th Street, Fergus McCaffrey. Whereas the previous gallery had completely white walls with a goal of parallelism in its curation, artists Ishiuchi Miyako went for a contrasting effect. On the bottom floor, the walls are black, grey, and dark blue, and the works are all framed differently as well as hung irregularly. I believe the intent as to why these works were curated this way is because each work demonstrates some type of imperfection, therefore the way the works are displayed should maintain that as well. For instance, “Scars #31” can be found on the grey wall to the right of three other framed photographs, each displaying the body of someone with some sort of abnormality. While there are two pieces hung parallel to each other, “Scars #31” is hung slightly lower as to coincide with this notion of imperfection. Additionally, the fact the walls are each colored differently and none are white adds to its imperfection because having plain, white walls would be too pristine for the nature of the show. Conclusively, the gallery space was deliberately manipulated so that it would interact with the art, producing this theme of abnormality.