My Area of Interest : Rhetoric Discussion

Heavy Branding of Art Galleries and Museums

The first text in the collection is called “The Steamroller of Branding’ by Nick Bell written in 2004. It states that graphic design has truly embraced branding in the last ten years and as a result of this we can now see branding on a global scale all around us, in every area of business.

There was once a great divide between corporate design and cultural design but we now see this divide narrowing and blurring as corporate identity/branding has been ‘welcomed into the cultural field by arts institutions that now share similar commercial ambitions to their corporate sponsors’. There are many examples of this, including the Tate, the Barbican Art Gallery, the Camden Arts Center etc. 

This was not always so. There has been a slow but notable shift in the attitudes and actions of gallery directors since the late 1980’s ‘as they have chosen to employ the same methods of persuasion that businesses use because they now see themselves as businesses’.  Why would they do this, one may ask? The simple answer is, increased public recognition brings more visitors to the exhibitions, thus generating greater profits. They are in a sense trying to lure greater numbers to the exhibition halls, and have found that they can even reach non-gallery goers with very strong and powerful branding. You are not at a Theo Van Doesburg exhibit, you are at the Tate!

Upon visiting the Tate Modern for example you’d be forgiven for at times forgetting you are even in a gallery and not a shopping mall. The entire experience has rendered the gallery space as far more ’visitor friendly’ , with cafes, shops, a restaurant etc. I have often spent the entire day there and a large part of this is often spent in the shop browsing.

Does this undermine the integrity of the art works held inside? It is right that art galleries should be more welcoming and natural that galleries will strive to create as much public awareness as possible but where should the line be drawn?

Bell debates, it is perhaps ok to heavily brand the outside of a museum or gallery but is it really necessary to see a logo repeated continuously on every wall and surface once you are inside the exhibition itself? You are reminded every second of where you are and this visual disturbance interrupts the message and the power of the particular subject matter you are there to view. Every gallery needs an identity but when did it become acceptable and normal for an identity to shout louder than the artwork itself.