Abstract

This article is a reflective case-study presenting and analysing the findings of ‘Thinking Is Seeing’, a practice-led research project we conducted between March and April 2017 under the Tate Exchange platform. The project focused on Tate Liverpool’s _Constellations_, the pioneering way of exhibiting works from the Tate collection motivated by thematic, chronological, or interpretative links identified through extended curatorial research. The philosophical background informing our research is the role that perception apportions to thought: a _constellation_, literally a collection of celestial objects, or more widely a set of any other things, events, (art)works, and experiences signifies a process of identifying connections, categorising meanings, drawing inferences. In other words, it signifies _thinking_. As Norman Maclean puts it: ‘All there is to thinking […] is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren’t noticing which makes you see something that isn’t even visible.’ (_A River Runs through It and Other Stories_. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017 (=1976), pp. 105–106.) This organic relation between thinking and seeing, where the one is but a prerequisite for the other, also echoes Theodor W. Adorno’s notion of a ‘constellation’: ‘Becoming aware of the constellation in which a thing stands is tantamount to deciphering the constellation which, having come to be, it bears within it.’ (_Negative Dialectics_, translated by E. B. Ashton. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973 (=1966), p. 163.) Against this background and given that the aim of the _Constellations_ is —to quote Francesco Manacorda— ‘to empower people to come and make their own thinking inside these rooms’, we investigated the ways in which _Constellations_ work as an exchange between art, curatorial gesture, and public engagement. What difference does it make to one’s appreciation of, say, Barnett Newman’s _Untitled Etching #1_ when one attends to those features of the work that make it part of a given curatorial narrative (like a _Constellation_)? Do members of the public feel empowered to challenge the perspective of the curator in recognising affinities within a _Constellation_ and construct new narratives? In order to tackle these research questions, we deployed participatory research during three public interactive workshops, which incorporated philosophical inquiry through structured discussion, reflective questioning, and shared criticism. This article shows how the practice of philosophical inquiry within the community, helps us understand that _seeing_ art happens through _understanding_ art and _vice versa_, while empowering participants to articulate exciting new interpretations.