Curatorship of the Architectural Space: The Historical Building as an Aesthetic/Affective Experience

Essay Intervención ISSN 2448-5934 ENERO-JUNIO 2025 JANUARY-JUNE 2025 OJS Curatorship of the Architectural Space: The Historical Building as an Aesthetic/Affective Experience Ir a la versión en español DOI: 10.30763/Intervencion.309.v1n31.88.2025 • YEAR 16, NO. 31: 33-46 Índice / Contents Submitted: 22.10.2024 • Accepted: 05.02.2025 • Published: 01.07.2025 Andrea Zelaya Freyman Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México (uaeméx), México | orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-3471-2749 Translation by Carmen Plascencia ABSTRACT This text explores the potential of historical buildings as catalysts for aesthetic experiences and presents a curatorial proposal aimed at integrating visitor’s subjective and intersubjective perspectives. Drawing on theorists such as Foucault, Bachelard, and Dewey, it examines how emotional interaction with architectural heritage can enrich narratives and disrupt the linearity of official discourse. As an example, it describes an activity carried out at the Viceregal Museum of Zinacantepec, in which a group of elderly people shared memories and redefined the former convent through their lived experiences. This collaborative approach demonstrated that visiting museums can foster a more intimate, reflective and creative connection with people. KEYWORDS culture, museology, imaginary, curatorship, historical building INTRODUCCIÓN ntering a museum means entering a reality that is mediated and, in a sense, controlled by the museum itself. In the case of history museums located in historical buildings, mediation often focuses on the historical discourse of the collections and the architecture, which limits the possible meanings constructed by visitors. This study aims to develop a narrative flow that E 31 CONVOCATORIA 2025 CALL FOR PAPERS 2025 Essay Intervención ISSN 2448-5934 ENERO-JUNIO 2025 JANUARY-JUNE 2025 OJS Índice / Contents emerges from the intimate and subjective relationship between the space and its visitors, making the aesthetic dimension of the historical building more perceptible. Through curatorship, it is possible to highlight perspectives and discourses that foster an emotional connection with the space, encouraging audiences to construct personal meanings based on their own experience. As Boris Groys notes, “Signs escape any conscious control by power, thanks to the continuous movement and displacement of their meanings” (Groys, 2008, p. 44). This article explores new discursive possibilities for museum-curated architectural heritage. As a case study, it analyzes the Viceregal Museum of Zinacantepec1 (State of Mexico), where a curatorial proposal was developed based on the theories of Groys, Foucault, Bachelard and Dewey, following an activity carried out with elderly people in said museum. MUSEUM AND ARCHIVE: NARRATIVES AND EXCLUSIONS The museum can be understood as an entity structured around two main aspects: forms of content and forms of expression (Deleuze, 2013, pp. 25-33). The former encompasses both the physical space and the objects comprising its collection. In this sense, the museum space may be perceived as an architectural container that houses collections, or these are selected to complement and create a discursive system in relation to the space. In other words, the space is subordinated to the collection, or the collection contributes to the discourse about the building that we seek to emphasize. In turn, the forms of expression derive from the ideological framework that gives meaning to the museum and encompass both the institution as a whole —with its policies and objectives— and the specific narrative conveyed through its exhibition, in which forms of content are linked to forms of expression. Thus, the museum functions as an archive from which the institution extracts a way of presenting a specific reality. This is constructed based on the objects chosen to form the collection, the architectural aspects highlighted in the interpretive flow, and the semantic relationships generated between these elements and the museography. According to Boris Groys, the archive collects and safeguards the objects that are relevant to a culture, while everything considered irrelevant or worthless is left out (Groys, 2008, p. 11). Therefore, whoever has the power of selection determines the museum’s con- 1 Museo Virreinal de Zinacantepec Curatorship of the Architectural Space: The Historical Building as an Aesthetic/Affective Experience CONVOCATORIA 2025 CALL FOR PAPERS 2025 32 Essay Intervención ISSN 2448-5934 ENERO-JUNIO 2025 JANUARY-JUNE 2025 OJS Índice / Contents tent and the curatorial and conceptual perspective from which it will be approached. Félix Suazo introduces the concept of ungovernable semantic surplus, which refers to the fact that the collection, the architectural space, and the narratives can communicate something different from the image the museum intends to project. Then, there are silent languages between what is shown and what is narrated, which are marginalized and obscured, while the museum’s official elements and discourses occupy the foreground (Suazo, 2012, p. 2). In order to ensure the coherence of the message the institution seeks to convey, this semantic surplus is excluded. In this way, what challenges discursive unity remains outside the archive and ignored by museography. Boris Groys also distinguishes two places where what remains outside the archive can be found. The first is the profane space, which includes objects and places deemed culturally irrelevant, such as access areas, lobbies, hallways (Figure 1), or administrative areas in the context of buildings. The second is the submedia space, which lies beneath the surface of the archive (Groys, 2008, p. 27), in some museums this can be stories of the architectural construction itself that are relegated to the background, in favor of highlighting the stories of the objects housed in the museum. For example, in the Viceregal Museum of Zinacantepec, the New Spain graffiti—historical markings on the walls of the former convent—are not part of the museum’s design and often go unnoticed, except by those aware of their existence. The exclusion of certain aspects responds not only to the need to preserve discursive and historical homogeneity, but also for practical reasons. Elements that are difficult to archive, such as the transient or the unstable, are frequently omitted, as they could complicate the clarity of the museological project. This includes visitors’ emotions, community memories, the perception of time within the museum space, or the manifestation of the ephemeral moment in architecture, which is revealed through sensory perceptions. History museums located in architectural monuments2 are a clear example of how institutions exclude narratives and meanings from objects and spaces that do not align with the official narrative. The difference between a historic building and a historic monument lies in thei (...truncated)