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Exhibit and point of sale: negotiating commerce and culture at the Vancouver Art Gallery

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 8; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14649360701529808

1470-1197

Emilie Cameron,

Fashion and Cultural Textiles

Abstract Drawing on ethnographic research at the Vancouver Art Gallery gift shop, this article considers the role of consumption and commercial activity in a cultural institution. It highlights the slippage between staff members' perceptions of ‘consumer culture’ and the consuming practices of visitors by problematizing competing understandings of the ‘visitor experience’ and analyzing the habitus of the shop staff. I argue that staff members' allegiances to an artistic habitus lead them to construe commerce and culture as distinct and opposing realms in the institution and to interpret their customers' interactions with art objects and shop merchandise according to this opposition. Geographers have argued in recent years that oppositions between culture and commerce are neither empirically nor epistemologically tenable, and yet a tendency remains in the consumption literature to regard shoppers as either naively complicit in the commercialization of culture or knowingly transgressive of the boundaries between commerce and culture, a tendency that reinforces and naturalizes the opposition of commerce and culture. If we are ever to understand consumption outside of this framework, I argue, we must direct some attention towards those who observe consumers and the ‘cultured’ place from which observation proceeds. Cet article examine, à partir d'une recherche ethnographique menée à la Galerie d'art de Vancouver, le rôle de la consommation et de la vente commerciale au sein d'une institution à vocation culturelle. Il fait ressortir le glissement entre les perceptions des employés sur la ‘culture de consommation’ et les pratiques consommatrices des visiteurs, en posant la problématique des interprétations conflictuelles données de ‘l'expérience du visiteur’ et en faisant porter l'analyse sur l'habitus des employés de la boutique. Je soutiens que les allégeances des membres du personnel à un habitus artistique les amènent à penser que le commerce et la culture représentent deux mondes distincts et opposés dans l'institution, et à interpréter les interactions de leur clientèle avec les objets d'art et les articles mis en vente dans la boutique en fonction de cette opposition. Ces dernières années, les géographes ont fait valoir que la mise en opposition entre la culture et le commerce n'est pas défendable, autant sur le plan empirique qu'épistémologique mais que, malgré cela, il existe toujours une tendance dans la littérature sur la consommation à considérer que les consommateurs sont soit naïfs et se font complices de la commercialisation de la culture, soit conscients et transgressent les limites entre le commerce et la culture. Cette tendance contribue à renforcer et naturaliser l'opposition entre le commerce et la culture. À mon sens, si nous allons, un jour, être en mesure de comprendre la consommation autrement qu'à partir de ce cadre de référence, nous devons alors tenir compte aussi de ceux qui observent les consommateurs et du lieu ‘cultivé’ à partir duquel se déroule l'observation. Partiendo de una investigación etnográfica en la tienda de novedades de La Galería de Arte de Vancouver este artículo considera el papel del consumo y la actividad comercial en una institución cultural. Destaca el bajón que existe entre las percepciones del personal de la ‘cultura consumidora’ y las prácticas consumidoras de los visitantes por la problematización de entendimientos contradictorios de la ‘experiencia del visitante’ y el análisis del habitus del personal de la tienda. Sugiero que la lealtad del personal a un habitus artístico les lleva a interpretar el comercio y la cultura como esferas distintas y contrarias dentro de la institución y a interpretar las interacciones de sus clientes con los objetos de arte y la mercancía de la tienda de acuerdo con esta contraposición. Los geógrafos han sugerido en los últimos años que la contraposición entre la cultura y el comercio no es sostenible ni empírica ni epistemológicamente y, sin embargo, permanece una tendencia en la literatura del consumo a considerar los compradores como o inocentemente cómplices en la comercialización de la cultura o conscientemente transgrediendo los límites entre el comercio y la cultura, una tendencia que refuerza y hace natural la contraposición entre comercio y cultura. Si en algún momento vamos a entender el consumo fuera de este marco, sugiero que debemos dirigirnos hacia aquellos que observan los consumidores y los lugares ‘cultos’ de donde procede la observación. Keywords: consumptionartgift shopsethnographyhabitusretailingKeywords: consommationartboutique cadeauxethnographiehabitusvente au detailKeywords: consumoartetiendas de novedadesetnografíahabitusventa al por menor Acknowledgements My thanks to the Gallery staff members and other research participants. I would also like to thank Phil Crang, Laura Cameron, Audrey Kobayashi, Michael Brown, and three anonymous reviewers for their suggestions. This project was supported by a Commonwealth Scholarship. Notes 1 As described by Miller et al. (1998 Miller, D., Jackson, P., Thrift, N., Holbrook, B. and Rowlands, M. 1998. Shopping, Place, and Identity, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]), this research is ethnographic to the extent that it included ‘some degree of participant observation …; having some sense of the wider social context of the individuals concerned …; and analyzing these observations within a comparative perspective’ (1998: 65). Research proceeded over a four-month period (May to August 2004) during which I worked as a volunteer staff member in the Gallery Store one or two days per week and maintained a journal recording my experiences there. I also conducted two- to three-hour interviews with individual visitors that involved a pre-interview, a walk through exhibit and shop together, and a follow-up interview. 2 The notion that staff members police visitors in order to maintain their habitus suggests that a proportion of their labor as employees is devoted to (inter) personal projects and goals. This assumption runs counter to a great deal of research into retail and other service industry labor, in which employees are often viewed as subjects of bureaucratic controls and workplace discipline, their emotional labor structured by employer expectations (e.g., Hochschild 1983 Hochschild, A.R. 1983. The Managed Heart, Berkeley: University of California Press. [Google Scholar]; Leidner 1999 Leidner, R. 1999. Emotional labour in service work. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 561: 81–95. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Employing ethnographic methods, several geographers have argued that, in fact, employees tend to carve out personalized spaces and identities within their workplace roles (Crang 1994 Crang, P. 1994. It's showtime: the workplace geographies of display in a restaurant in South East England. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 12: 675–704. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), and that in some retail settings, employees actively style their identities through their relationships with the objects on sale (e.g., Crewe, Gregson and Brooks 2003; Wright 2005 Wright, D. 2005. Commodifying respectability: distinctions at work in the bookshop. Journal of Consumer Culture, 5(3): 295–314. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). My own ethnographic research at the VAG gift shop leads me believe that research into service industry employment has paid insufficient attention to the pleasures and personal investments some sectors of service employment offer, as well as to the impact of such personal investments in shaping retail geographies. 3 Although still regarded by visitors as the ‘gift shop’, the VAG refers to the shop as the Gallery Store. Other art galleries, such as Tate Britain, have also removed ‘gift’ from their shop names in an effort to re-brand themselves. 4 The names of gift shop staff members and other research participants have been changed in this article but I have cited the original names of VAG employees who participated in structured interviews. 5 This form of impulse buying is exactly what the store hopes for and is one of the reasons given for the success of the Emily Carr, Frida Kahlo, and Georgia O'Keefe sales: ‘it was lots of women, middle-aged, with money. They tend to be impulse buyers’ (Diana, in ethnographic journal, 10 June 2004).