Site of Sight, Right of Sight, and Rite of Sight: Exploring the Cultures of Seeing
Renata Holod
Professor, History of Art
Cultures of seeing. For 30 years at Penn I’ve been investigating cultures of seeing, from the ground up and from the air down. And basically I’ve come to an understanding that cultures of seeing, that is, to see, consist of three parts. And they are simply described as the right to sight, the site of sight, and the rite of sight. Okay? Rite of sight, last one, r-i-t-e, how it is that you go about seeing, and how various societies structured this seeing. The site of sight. Where a thing is often influences what we actually learn about it, how we actually take it in. And the first one, which is the right to sight. Today we assume that everybody saw everything at every time. And of course we know that it’s not true. So there are varieties of treasures hidden in treasure houses and museums that actually at their own time of making were never seen more – by more than a handful of people. I want you to think about this.