The lecture and workshop introduced our ‘somatic’ approach to exhibition design, offering both an extensive historical perspective and a survey of current practice. Display is not only understood as an act of disclosure, but importantly as an authorial act of framing and the negotiation of content.

How is an exhibition apprehended? The visitor’s experience of an exhibition is central to its reception and yet this aspect is seldom given as much emphasis during the organizational process as the selection of theme, objects, and information. How to create a physical ­experience that encourages understanding, participation and emotional engagement?

Coming from a cross-disciplinary background in both art and design, our approach is based in extensive experience in the exhibition context. In our work, we probe the fluid inter-relations between the so-called background and foreground, between invisible structure and sculptural proposition, proposing an integrated attitude that treats both the support and the supported as artistic opportunities within an overall context of perception. By activating spatial and somatic conditions, we focus on the agency of display itself.