Genre in Exhibitions

It’s genre week! I’m excited. We’ll explore what genre means, how to work with genre expectations, and even how to invent a new one. 

First, what is it?

A genre is a category of art, literature or music where all works share characteristics. Imagine bookstore sections: romance, fantasy, mystery.

But exhibitions also have genres: natural history, digital immersive, sculpture garden.

Lists are useful because of what they exclude. Bookstore sections are standard, right? Genres are finite, new ones are rare. For every one that exists, an infinite number don’t. 

For example: biography is big, but “Muppet fanfiction in Spanish“ isn’t. Yet. (Kermit la rana!)

Therefore, working outside current genres is risky. We could invent a new genre, but more likely we just won’t succeed.

Recently, the genre of an exhibition had me stumped. It was walls of educational text panels obscuring photo murals. If it wasn’t a photo show, was it a text panel show? But that’s not an existing genre, or a new one people want.

Here’s the thing:
Exhibitions have genres too. Often our projects naturally fall within them. It’s when they don’t that things get interesting.

Next: working with genre expectations — and inventing new ones.

Warmly,
Jonathan