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Culture Shop : Dear Serpentine Gallery,

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from: Janko Vook [janko.vook@art-bag.net]
date:15 May 98 - 15h:31m

message:

Dear Serpentine Gallery,

The Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery, London, had it first: the understanding of customer behaviour in the cultural sector. They were the first one's to open their main doors directly onto the gallery shop. The gallery itself is downstairs in the gloomy sub-terrain. Let's not get into the 'social interface' of the cafˇ, but the gallery shop seems to me to be the answer to a crisis in contemporary curatorial practice and museology. Not only does it happily marry with the private industry (remaining subsidised?), but it also:

  1. pays tribute to the cultural overload we are facing and
  2. contextualises the simulated and mediated society we are allegedly inhabiting.

Without wanting to go into too much detail, just try the newly opened Serpentine Gallery for empirical evidence: the exhibition space has been extended, which leaves all the visitors confused and exhausted and the book shop has been shrunk and moved next to the toilets. Still, within the badly climatised periphery of the cultural centre you can find the majority of people sweating with maximum friction in order to get their cultural digest from the printed word and acquire the weekend souvenir. Mismanaged architecture!

Yours,

Janko Vook [janko.vook@art-bag.net]