Can exhibitions present histories of art in ways that texts cannot?
Art history has traditionally been conveyed through written texts such as scholarly books, articles, and catalogues that analyse artists and movements. However, museums and galleries offer an alternative medium for presenting art history: the exhibition. This raises the question of whether exhibitions can present the histories of art in ways that texts cannot. Exhibitions provide a direct, experiential encounter with artworks, engaging viewers’ senses and emotions in a physical space that texts cannot fully replicate. They enable curators to craft a spatial narrative through the selection and arrangement of objects, immersing viewers in an environment that conveys context and meaning. At the same time, however, exhibitions are not inherently self-explanatory and rely on textual context such as wall labels and catalogues, to anchor the display in history and avoid misinterpretation. This essay argues that, while exhibitions offer an immersive experience beyond the capacity of text alone, they work best in tandem with textual information to provide both emotional impact and historical accuracy. The case of the Paula Rego retrospective at Tate Britain in 2021 will illustrate how an exhibition can successfully integrate immersive visual storytelling with contextual depth to present art history in a nuanced way.
One of the greatest strengths of exhibitions is their ability to deliver an immersive experience of art that a text simply cannot provide. Viewing an artwork in person is a profoundly different experience from reading about it or seeing a small reproduction on a page. Exhibitions allow viewers to encounter the authentic objects themselves, preserving this visceral feeling. In person, one can move around the artwork, observing how light plays on its surface and how brushstrokes create texture and depth, qualities that are not available in a reproduction or textual description. Exhibitions also engage multiple senses and create an environmental context for art. Unlike a text, which primarily engages the intellect through reading, a well-designed exhibition can appeal to sight, touch and sound. Galleries often use lighting, spatial design, and occasionally audio or interactive elements to shape the visitor’s experience. These sensory cues immerse visitors in the artwork’s world. In a book, an author can only describe the appearance or effect of an artwork; in an exhibition, the viewer physically experiences it. The impact is often more visceral and memorable. The painting Angel by Paula Rego, made in 1998, confronts viewers at life-size with a figure wielding a sword and sponge, an image whose emotional intensity and scale could never be fully captured by words alone.
Beyond individual sensory experiences, exhibitions can convey narratives and interpretative arguments through spatial arrangement, something fundamentally different from the linear narrative of a written text. Curators act as storytellers, deciding which artworks to include and how to organise them so that, as visitors move through the exhibit, they encounter a sequence of ideas or historical developments. Art exhibitions have increasingly been understood, not just as displays of art, but as narrative forms in their own right. As Saloni Mathur observes, an exhibition often “emerges as a text woven from a great many threads”, incorporating divergent aesthetic viewpoints, historical contexts, and ideological layers, all staged together as “visual and curatorial arguments.” The exhibition itself functions as a complex narrative, woven through the selection and juxtaposition of artworks and the design of space. Art historian Caroline Jones likewise suggests that exhibitions constitute a “modern type of argument” about art history. An exhibition’s thesis is not conveyed through paragraphs, but through the arrangement of objects, images, and information in a physical space, a form that can reveal broad cultural narratives or, alternatively, reflect the singular vision of a curator. This mode of storytelling allows exhibitions to present art history in ways that textual narratives cannot easily emulate.
Tate Britain’s 2021 retrospective of Paula Rego illustrates how an exhibition can shape art history differently from text-based narratives. Curated by Elena Crippa and Zuzana Flašková, the retrospective was designed to tell the story of Rego’s life and career while embedding her work within its socio-political context. Rego grew up under Portugal’s Estado Novo dictatorship, a repressive regime that censored artists and suppressed political dissent. Her work also responded to feminist struggles, particularly the fight for reproductive rights, as seen in her Abortion Series in 1998, which depicted women undergoing illegal abortions in response to Portugal’s failed referendum on abortion rights. Unlike a monograph or scholarly text, that would present Rego’s themes in a structured argument, the exhibition allowed visitors to physically move through her artistic evolution, experiencing the themes, media, and personal narratives directly. The exhibition’s spatial design contributed to its storytelling. Each gallery space was arranged thematically rather than strictly chronologically, juxtaposing works from different periods to highlight recurring motifs in Rego’s art, such as female agency and resistance. Curators like Okwui Enwezor have advocated for exhibition strategies that move beyond the traditional canon. Enwezor emphasised curating within culture, meaning that exhibitions should engage with historical, social, and political realities rather than presenting art as a purely formal exercise. His curatorial approach at Documenta 11 in 2002 exemplified how exhibitions could broaden art historical narratives by incorporating non-Western perspectives, thus challenging the dominance of the white cube’s selective memory. Rego’s retrospective actively resisted the neutrality of the white cube by embedding contextual materials throughout the exhibition. Wall texts, archival photographs, and recorded interviews provided a look into Rego’s influences, her personal struggles, and the political landscapes that shaped her work. This method aligns with Enwezor’s notion of curating beyond the canon, as it situated Rego’s work within a broader feminist discourse rather than isolating it as autonomous artistic production.
To illustrate the irreplaceable role of exhibitions in presenting art history, it is useful to contrast them with cases where art is only known through text, such as the 1950s–60s performance art movement, particularly Allan Kaprow’s 18 Happenings in 6 Parts in 1959. As performance art is ephemeral by nature, much of what remains of these works are written descriptions, photographs, and scripts. Scholars can reconstruct Kaprow’s performances through textual analysis, but no amount of description can replicate the immediacy of being present in the moment the sound, movement, and audience interaction that defined the work. This demonstrates the limits of text in capturing the full essence of certain artistic expressions. On the other hand, the modernist exhibition paradigm, epitomised by Brian O’Doherty’s concept of the white cube, presents a significant danger of exhibitions, gallery spaces and museums without the text, in the way it strips artworks of their historical, social, and cultural contexts, reinforcing a false sense of neutrality. By displaying art in pristine, white-walled spaces that suggest a timeless and universal aesthetic, exhibitions can create the illusion that meaning is inherent in the form alone, detached from the complexities of its creation and reception. This decontextualisation not only distorts how viewers engage with artworks but also reinforces a Eurocentric, modernist canon that prioritises formalist interpretations over lived experiences. Thomas McEvilley likens the atmosphere of these galleries to that of a religious sanctuary, where art is revered in silence, discouraging discussion of its broader implications. By demanding that viewers focus solely on form, the white cube enforces a detachment from the realities that shaped the work. This erasure is far from neutral; rather, it marginalises narratives that challenge dominant Western art-historical perspectives and naturalises a selective version of history that aligns with institutional biases. Without accompanying textual or contextual elements, such as historical framing, interpretative texts, or critical discourse, exhibitions risk presenting art in an ahistorical vacuum, reinforcing hegemonic structures and limiting the potential for diverse interpretations.
Exhibitions and texts serve distinct yet complementary functions in the presentation of art history. This essay has highlighted that exhibition, through their immersive environments, spatial storytelling, and curatorial narratives, offer unique ways of engaging with art’s past that texts alone cannot achieve. The 2021 Paula Rego retrospective at Tate Britain exemplified how exhibitions can foreground context, interactivity, and thematic connections in ways that written accounts struggle to convey. However, text remains vital in framing, documenting, and interpreting art history. The most effective approach, therefore, is one that recognises the combination of both exhibition and textual narratives.
Noticing Art 