Post 5: Outlets in museums

I love seeing outlets at museums. One thing I’m fond of about the whole thing is that I always get the sense that they’re “not supposed to be there.” That in a perfect world, there wouldn’t be outlets below works of art in museums. That, in this world, they’re an interruption (possibly a minor one) to the contextual blankness and neutral posture of the exhibition rooms. The subtle degree of interruption that the outlets quietly assert is made further exciting by the subtle degree of concealment that's often been imposed on them. Usually (always) this takes place in the form of the outlets being painted over with the same color as the surrounding wall (see the poor-quality photo above).

There’s a way in which this attempt to minimize the appearance of the outlets does make them less seeable, but somehow also makes them more noticeable...? I'm going to sort of create my own definitions of seeable and noticeable here–where seeable reflects something's pure visual capacity to be apparent (i.e., the seeability of something would be decreased in an instance of camouflage) and noticeable has to do with something's ability to catch your eye for a reason that doesn’t relate to how easy it is to see (i.e., not because it's bright, has great contrast, is large). I’m using noticeable in a reverse sense to seeable. I take greater notice of outlets in museums than elsewhere because of the interest they gain by being fashioned to not be seen.

A museum outlet as:

1. an attempt made to not see something in a room that is about seeing things.

2. the kind of presence something takes on when you can see that it has been disguised.