Art and cultural institutions as social extensions of personal self-identity
Jacek Olender
Avant 2015 DOI: 10.26913/60202015.0112.0003 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that individuals construct self-identity partly by anchoring memories in significant artworks and heritage objects, and that artworks mediated by museum and gallery contexts function as extensions of the self. Contends that self-identity and art share a structure of cultural meanings embedded in material scaffoldings, and proposes examining object-shaped identity at a personal rather than group level. |
Abstract
The paper discusses artworks and artefacts considered as both cultural heritage and meaningful tokens for personal self-identity.The arguments come mostly from phenomenological understanding of self-identity and art, but the terminological toolkit comes mostly from the Extended Mind Thesis.While many museologists and theorists of culture argue that objects presented in a particular social context can shape group identity, I believe in taking this question to a lower, personal level.In this paper, I argue that we build our self-identity partially by anchoring our memories with significant art and heritage objects.I state that artworks, mediated by cultural context immersion of museums and galleries, serve as self-identity extensions.Since I find both selfidentity and art structured as sets of cultural meanings wrapped in material scaffoldings, I draw a relation between those two, showing the crucial meaning of material cultural objects for the formation of our self-identity.