Joel Sanders Architect

Look, Linger, and Touch Something

Published in Spike Art Magazine, Issue 75 (Spring 2023) pp. 108-115

Diana Fuss In 2011, in conjunction with an exhibition at the Hessel Museum, we wrote a cultural history of the museum bench. Here we are, twelve years later, again thinking about benches, this time to address the pressing question—both practical and ethical—of diversity and accessibility. We’ve raised the benchmark you could say.

Joel Sanders In that essay, we traced the evolution of an overlooked component of gallery design, the museum bench, from the 16th century to today. We were both struck by how museum design, considered in relationship to the artwork on display, perpetuates the deep-seated anxieties of Western art – and, ultimately, of Western culture – about the corporeal body.

DF We were also curious about why, in museum studies, there was so little work on or interest in the museum bench. As we dove into the archive and began to trace its history, we discovered that even the architecture and design manuals devoted to museum galleries chose to overlook the furniture, in favor of design elements like picture frames, wall colors, and lighting fixtures. It didn’t take us long to realize that the indifference to and disdain for the utilitarian bench had everything to do with the inconvenient demands of museumgoers’ bodies – physical bodies that became tired, overheated, bored, hungry, loud, distracted, even horny. Over time, the presence of museum seating became an uncomfortable reminder that acts of spectatorship, far from being disembodied, are located in real bodies, with distinct needs and differing abilities. We found many reasons for why the museum bench became an object of derision, among them its subversion of attention, its repudiation of rationalism, and its rivalry with art. Now, what stands out to me the most is the way the bench became a prime seat of cultural discomfort with unruly bodies. More than any other factor, this fear of the masses, the maddening crowd in all its messy materiality, most directly challenged the notion of the art museum as a place for the disembodied, aesthetic contemplation of art.

JS I agree. The first palace museums, like the Uffizi and the Louvre, used two elements – picture frames and freestanding chairs – to “construct” the ideal humanist spectator, a disembodied eye that visually communes with paintings. In keeping with perspectival theory that emerged during the Renaissance, spectatorship was considered an out-of-body, ocular-centric experience. The historical research we conducted revealed the extent to which the story of the overlooked museum bench is a story of class and privilege. When the National Gallery in London opened in 1838 to educate citizens of all classes by exposing them to great works of art, they confronted a challenge not so different that which many museums face today: namely, crowd control. Wanting to protect and conserve priceless masterpieces, designers invented tactics that would transform the unruly public into respectable, well-behaved citizens. For the first time, guardrails forced viewers to circulate around the perimeter of the gallery at a safe distance from works of art, and freestanding chairs that obstructed traffic flow were removed and replaced by fixed (often round) couches marooned in the center of the gallery.

Fast-forward to the emergence of the white cube in the 20th century. Both Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried describe viewing abstract pictures as an instantaneous optical experience. Again, architecture was enlisted to transform the viewer into an obedient, disembodied eye. The track light, placed out of sight on the ceiling, replaced the obtrusive guard rail, distributing a band of light around the gallery wall and the perimeter of the floor that demarcated a circulation zone of looking but not touching. In the white cube, sofa islands were replaced by benches whose minimalist design – a hard, horizontal plane supported by skinny legs – was intended to be visually inconspicuous, so as not to compete with the works of art on display. Undermining the notion of a disembodied eye, the museum bench was an awkward reminder that spectatorship is, in truth, grounded in the multisensory experiences of actual human bodies – bodies subject not only to fatigue or distraction, but also, on occasion, to the temptation to touch or damage vulnerable works of art.

DF  Since we collaborated on this essay twelve years ago, we have both pursued our mutual interest in multisensory experience, albeit in different ways. I’ve been thinking more about classrooms, specifically the need for embodied, sensory, flexible spaces that can accommodate today’s new active learning pedagogies and diverse student populations. Five years ago, you established MIXdesign, a think tank and inclusive design studio that works with institutional clients, including museums, to make their facilities accessible and welcoming for people of different ages, genders, races, religions, and disabilities. I’d like to focus on your MIXdesign work, if I may. How has your thinking about museum design evolved since launching MIXdesign? And is there anything you wish we had done differently in our earlier cultural history of the museum bench?

JS Thinking back, we wanted to put the body back into theories of spectatorship, as it were, and the bench was the historical figure for this re-embodiment. While we addressed questions of bodily exhaustion, discomfort, inattention, and even appetites, we didn’t attend enough to the question of museumgoers’ diverse social identities beyond class, a subject not yet fully on our radars, nor those of museums. Today, we both think about diversity all the time, but I wish we had been more forward-thinking about this issue.

DF Me too. It would have been helpful to think not strictly in terms of “the body,” but rather in terms of “bodies.” At the time we were putting this essay together, some great work was being done by scholars like Bridget Cook and Mabel O. Wilson, who were looking at museum and exhibition design through the lens of race, as well as Tobin Siebers and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, who were focusing on disability. Now, museums are pursuing a variety of measures to further diversity, recruiting minority curators, for example, and mounting exhibitions that showcase underrepresented artists.

JS Some museums are also sponsoring American Sign Language (ASL) tours for deaf people, tactile tours for blind people, and sensory-friendly hours for autistic people.

DF The American Alliance of Museums recently put out an inclusive design statement that officially embraces diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI). It’s not clear to me though how quickly institutions are adapting, particularly when it comes to things like the design, placement, and location of museum furniture.

JS Museums are gradually becoming aware of the problem, though they are only just beginning to explore the spatial consequences of DEAI for non-normative users. We need more creative design initiatives in the United States that go beyond ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance.

DF Can you say more about an initiative you’re involved in currently? I know you are now conducting MIXmuseum, a research and design project in partnership with the Queens Museum.

JS Our project treats the Queens Museum as a case study to investigate a challenge faced by many art museums that underwent renovations and expansions in the early-to-mid-2000s. Aiming to make their buildings more inviting, these museums hired architects to replace traditional, opaque facades with glazed-window walls that lead to spectacular atriums. But post-occupancy research shows that these spaces are not in fact meeting the needs of many of those visitors that museums hoped to attract. For this reason, our focus, with the principle of participatory design in mind, has shifted from galleries to public-entry sequences: arriving at the front door from parking or public transportation; getting orientated in the reception area; waiting, resting, and participating in programs in the atrium; and taking care of bodily needs in the restrooms.

DF Can you say more about participatory design? It seems essential to this research.

JS The disability rights motto “Nothing About Us Without Us” is a touchstone for our study. Inclusive design depends on the active participation of users who can provide valuable insights from their lived experiences of designed environments. We’ve been collaborating with colleagues from the Yale School of Public Health to develop engagement tools – surveys, interviews, workshops – that allow us to better understand the intersecting and sometimes conflicting needs of both staff members and visitors at the Queens Museum. We have also recruited an access cohort composed of twenty-five members who together represent a cross section of the museum’s diverse audience, including native Spanish speakers, trans and nonbinary folk, older adults, parents with young children, and users of wheelchairs, scooters, and walkers. The data we’ve analyzed so far has revealed a couple things we expected, including the presence of restricted access (negotiating steps and awkward ramps) and difficult wayfinding (navigating destinations within the building). But it has also revealed additional problems, including sensory overstimulation (induced by glare and loud noises) and an all-around unfriendly atmosphere (created mainly by a clinical, white interior devoid of color, tactile material, or any type of multicultural imagery). The most frequent complaint? Poor bench seating!

DF Naturally, I’m curious about the seating. We ended our essay on the museum bench by arguing that museum furniture needs to be viewed as more than a necessary evil. Long treated as an aesthetic headache, we asked: Why not approach it as an aesthetic opportunity? On that note, can you offer a sneak peek of a few specific access design recommendations generated by your study?

JS We have lots of ideas, beginning with the reception desk, which we’re reconceiving as a multi-purpose area that integrates visitor orientation and seating. Visitors obtain multilingual information at the reception desk, with a multi-height, overhanging counter that provides sight-lines and ranges of motion, along with leg room for children, people of small stature, and wheelchair users. We recommend an “access shelf” that displays accessibility equipment like wheelchairs, assistive listening devices, fidget toys, and noise-canceling headphones, as well as interactive digital touchscreens and large-font print material for wayfinding in braille, ASL, and non-English languages. Visitors can also take a break and recharge their minds, bodies, and electronic devices at a built-in lounge that extends from the desk area, where multi-height area seating can accommodate people of different sizes and abilities, while slots allow people who use wheelchairs to sit side by side with those who don’t.

The antiseptic atrium poses another challenge. We recommend portable, modular furniture, such as benches, acoustic wall dividers, and ramps, that can be easily reconfigured to subdivide the atrium into smaller “micro-climates” for school groups and events. The kit includes lightweight, multi-height seating options like ottomans, double-sided benches with back support, and footrests that can provide places to relax for people of different ages, heights, weights, and abilities. We’ll also be introducing multisensory materials to reflect more multicultural identities. We imagine textured and colorful seating, for example, clad in textile patterns created by local crafts artists.

DF And that other kind of seating – toilets?

JS Here, we envision retrofitting the existing, sex-segregated bathrooms and treating them as one larger space, with communal washing stations and private toilet stalls. Two comfort rooms, each with a mirror, sink, toilet, and baby-changing table, offer privacy for shy people, as well as caregivers and religiously observant Jews and Muslims. Integrated seating is essential, while transparent slots in the mirror behind the sink afford views into the adjacent lounge. These are just a few recommendations, but they should offer a glimpse of the kind of scalable solutions that could be adapted by other museums.

DF You’ve developed these proposals in response to the Queens Museum’s visitor demographics, but it seems to me that they have the potential to change everyone’s experience in almost any museum.

JS Exactly. In collaboration with the Queens Museum and the Architectural League of New York, we’ll soon be publishing the outcome of our study and making it free to the public online – an open access of information and ideas, if you will. In imagining more equitable museum spaces, we ourselves have been inspired by the insight and input of community members, stakeholders, visitors, and employees, as well as by artists who, since the 1960s, have used sound, video, and performance to create artworks that expand our sensory horizons. The goal is to work with museums to make them more accessible to people who have previously been excluded. One important part of that involves transcending the ocular-centric legacy of museum design, which we addressed in our museum bench essay, and reimagining museums as multisensory environments – places that welcome each one of us, no matter our identities or embodiments, to encounter the world of art from multiple perspectives. Designing through the lens of diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion has proven to be a real catalyst for producing creative design resolutions to corporeal challenges, even – and perhaps especially – the seemingly simple act of sitting on a museum bench.

DF I don’t think either of us realized that the museum bench might actually be a key to resolving so many of the issues that alternately confound and inspire institutional design work today. I like to think the lowly bench, at long last, is having its moment.

 

JOEL SANDERS is the founder of JSA/MIXdesign, an architectural studio and inclusive design consultancy in New York, as well as a Professor at Yale School of Architecture and Yale School of Public Health. He is the author of three books, and his projects have been featured in numerous international exhibitions and the permanent collections of several American museums.

 

DIANA FUSS is the Louis W. Fairchild Class of ’24 Professor of English at Princeton University. She is the author of numerous books, including Dying Modern: A Meditation on Elegy (2013) and The Sense of an Interior: Four Writers and the Rooms that Shaped Them (2004).