| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 歐洲文化與觀光研究所 === 106 === Museums have been collecting and presenting contemporary fashion couture since late twentieth century. Nowadays, museums turn to fashion exhibitions with increased frequency, relying on its magnetic attractiveness to draw in the crowd. Exhibiting fashion within the museum’s scope has created unconventional scene. The most visited exhibition in the Victoria and Albert Museum history, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition had brought new visitors, media exposure and commercial interest. However, the cooperation between museums and commerce is often debatable because of its commerciality, its legitimacy and institution autonomy. This thesis takes Alexander McQueen’s retrospective exhibition, Savage Beauty as a case study to examine the corporate sponsorship and to analyze whether or not the museum has turned into a promotional venue for commercial entities.
This research is comprised of an analysis of the three core facets of the fashion exhibition: the museums, the corporate sponsorship, and the exhibition curatorship. First, in order to analyze how the museum has become an attractive venue for the fashion industry to showcase their design, this thesis demonstrate the process of legitimization and power-knowledge displayed with Tony Bennett’s exhibitionary complex and Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction. Secondly, since the focus of the museum has shifted to be more democratization and popularization, this thesis investigates the corporate sponsorship to interpret several issues revolving around institutional ethics, as well as the museum’s autonomy. Finally, by analyzing exhibition discourse, the visitors’ reviews as well as the history of fashion exhibition, this research explicates the influence of exhibiting fashion in the museum field.
This research adopts a qualitative research approach, applying multiple data collection methods: discourse analysis, fieldwork and semi-structure interviews to the visitors, to develop a thorough interpretive analysis. Research finding suggested that the V&A had emphasized Alexander McQueen’s artistry, exhibit-worthiness and legitimacy through convincing aspects and there was no hint of commercialism within the exhibition. The sponsors have long history supporting McQueen. However, the corporate sponsorship indeed brings wider recognition, and long-lasting influence through the aesthetic appropriation as well as the interchangeability between cultural capital, economic capital and social capital of the museum and the corporations.
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