As soon as a visitor sets foot within an art gallery, the process of self-regulation begins: they immediately “become the principle of their own subjection.” The visitor lowers the volume of their voice, slows the pace of their walk: running is out of the question. There are no warnings or requests on display, it is a given, when you enter an art gallery, you must act in this way.
As they enter an exhibition space, they may choose to put their hands behind their back, lean backwards and nod at the paintings in approval, they need to show that they appreciate, and understand the “art.” The visitor does not want to look, and feel like an idiot. Even if the visitor does not find the work on display interesting, they’ve already entered the room, they can’t turn around: they need to complete a full lap before they even consider exiting.
Although many galleries employ gallery assistants, they are not always present. In many cases the gallery regulates through an “omnipresent and omniscient power.” Helping to achieve this is the scale of the rooms. Through displaying in an enormous, well-lit white space, the gallery demonstrates one of the main ideas behind the panopticon, which is that “power should be visible and unverifiable.”
Through displaying in this kind of space, with many of the work being unprotected and well within touching distance, the visitors are almost being dared to do something wrong, but they don’t, “visibility is a trap.” When the visitor is in a space of this scale, they are in a state of “permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.”
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