Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Listening on Display: Exhibiting Sounding Artworks, 1960s to the Present

Listening on Display: Exhibiting Sounding Artworks, 1960s to the Present

Semmerling, Linnea

Hardcover

Art HistoryGeneral ArtGeneral Sociology

ISBN13: 9798765136232
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: Feb 5 2026
Pages: 232
Weight: 1.05
Height: 0.56 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

Listening on Display provides an empirical investigation of the historically, culturally, and socially contingent ways in which artists, curators, and visitors relate to sounds in contemporary art exhibitions.

Sounding artworks have appeared regularly in contemporary art exhibitions since the 1960s, yet scholars of art history, musicology, sound studies, and museum studies have long noted the experiential difficulties this development poses. They describe how sounds challenge the sensory hierarchy of the museum, how they disrupt the venerable silence of the white cube, or how they drown in the ambient noise of galleries.

This book explores the listening experiences of artists, visitors, curators, and technicians in more than twenty exhibitions that have taken place at contemporary art museums, alternative art spaces, and other venues in Germany and the United States since the 1960s. Through archival research, visitor book analysis, interviews, and observations drawing on sensory ethnography, Semmerling brings together their ideas and ideals about aesthetic ambitions, sensory abilities, cultural conventions, and technological standards. In doing so, this book lays the groundwork for rethinking sound in exhibition spaces.

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