A Dimensionless Narrative. From Exhibition Design to the Art of Display

The paper aims to implement a critical reflection on some changes underway on the theme of narrative in design disciplines, an aspect that affects today the design, especially since the field is assigned the task of managing, in their formal and interactive aspects, information and transactional contents. The application field of the paper is focused on the museum, as it has been till now the reference point for a visual narrative in which Art has played a central role. This issue, the language and narrative that derives from it, in the ’80s was an exquisite prerogative of architectural disciplines. Rather today, it extends to design and art, disciplines inevitably called to compare with the rampant and noisy world of images, witness today of an excess of communication and information, but at the same time of a narrative deficiency. Methodologically, through the analysis of some philosophers of the twentieth century who have repeatedly sought a path of meaning for the complex world of signs, the paper aims to give a place to a certain contemporary phenomenology expressed by some museums’ case studies. In the final part, the paper ends up drawing some conclusive lines over this contemporary scenario, with particular reference to the role of narrative and how it is today radically changing.