There was a lively discussion last night organised by the Bard Graduate Centre about issues of museum display. Richard Rand, the Associate Director of Collections at the Getty Museum, spoke particularly interestingly about attitudes to display both at the Getty itself, where they are attempting to deal with the strange disjunction between the white austerity of Richard Meier’s architecture and the interior design by Thierry Despont, which was always an odd mismatch; and at the Los Angeles County Museum, where the new galleries are planned to be ahistorical – the works of art as ‘floating signifiers’. It looks like the new displays at Frick Madison are going to have a big impact on gallery thinking and gallery design. See the attached thoughtful article by Anne Higonnet on the differences between a psudo-historical and an ahistorical setting.

https://www.artforum.com/slant/anne-higonnet-on-the-frick-madison-85430