Developing experience : Alexander Dorner's Exhibitions, from Weimar Republic Germany to the Cold War United States

Following the work of German-American curator Alexander Dorner (1893-1957) from his early curatorial career in Niedersachsen to professorships in New England, this dissertation explores the intersections of Euro-American modernism and developing ideations of experience within aesthetic philosophy. Dorner's work was formulated in deep engagement with (and often intentional contradiction to) the art theory being incubated in contemporaneous art institutions, pedagogies, and practices. His written texts and museum praxis responded to emerging notions of subjectivity, restoration, and perception in the aesthetic theory of Alois Riegl and Erwin Panofsky, art restoration mandates advocated by German museum leaders such as Max Sauerlandt and Kurt Karl Eberlein, and the artistic productions of El Lissitzky and Herbert Bayer. Against shifting expressions of democracy in Weimar Germany and the mid-century United States, Dorner's polemical focus on museum experience was, in effect, an attempt to train citizens for collective but heterogeneous social life.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Uchill, Rebecca, 1978-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• CarolineA . Jones.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/100327

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/100327