Museum Exhibitions and the Interior:Labour, Emotion and Hierarchy ‘Behind the Scenes’

This chapter draws on a range of museum exhibition histories to reflect on some of the potential synergies between studies of the interior and exhibitions. It sketches out current agendas in exhibition studies, and shows how they intersect and can potentially be enriched with reference to studies of the interior. In essence, this chapter is a manifesto, calling for those studying museum exhibitions to take seriously three areas of concern that have long occupied design historians of the interior: labour and process, embodiment and emotions, and social and professional hierarchies of gender, class, race, sexuality and ableism.