Leseprobe

156 In The Truth in Painting , Jacques Derrida reflected on the relationship between what he called ‘ ergon ’ and ‘ parergon .’ While the former term refers to the work itself, the latter describes its accompaniments, which are neither part of nor distinct from the work. Within this category, he placed such details as clothes in pictures, or columns in architec- ture, but also picture frames. Following a long art-theoretical and philosophical tradition, he studied their interconnectedness as well as the ways in which they struggle for the viewer’s attention. This breakout from the domain of the work and the outreaches of the parerga to neighbouring structures such as frames or museumwalls, and thus the shifting conflict between ‘work’ and ‘accompaniments,’ have also drawn the attention of other scholars, such as Gérard Genette in literature and Joseph Grigely in art exhibitions. 2 The particular parerga of interest in this volume are precisely those whose exhibitory purpose is tomediate artworks inmuseums for their viewers. This includes material elements such as frames, pedestals, vitrines, and presentational aspects of gallery setup such as lighting, and informational accompaniments such as catalogues and pedagogical resources. A number of these powerful means for staging artworks have repeatedly been the subject of debates around the question of displaying art for the past thirty years. Among these, the wall label in its most reduced form, i.e. as a pure object label—onwhich I focus here— seems hardly spectacular, and appears to be nothing more than a mere bureaucratic, and in most cases very inconspicuous, addendum. This seemingly ‘pure facticity’ might be a reason why, in contrast to what we observe with their larger, pedagogically motivated, relatives (i.e. fully-fledged explanatory or interpretation-guiding wall texts), object labels have thus far not drawn much scholarly attention. 3 In most cases, object labels consist of only a few lines, giving such factual informa- tion as the name of artist, the title of object, the date, and—definitely—the owner. Occa- sionally, there is additional information on the material, size, and remarks on the work’s ANGELA MATYSSEK Death by/Life by Wall Label ¹ 1 Many thanks to Regine Ehleiter, Mario Kramer, Marc Naroska, Jeffrey Saletnik, Barbara Segelken, for hints, comments, a text, a photograph from a US-american museum display, and an interview; to the participants of the workshop Collections, Displays and the Agency of Objects (Cambridge, UK, 20–23. 9. 2017); and to Ruben Bieker for his translation.  2 Genette, Paratexts , 1997; Grigely, Exhibition Prosthetics , 2010.  3 Art history as well as museum studies and interest in museum didactics has thus far addressed only the pedagogical/elaborate version of wall texts and labels. The only work fromwhich