This week’s reading “From the Street to the Gallery: A Critical Analysis of the Inseparable Nature of Graffiti and Context” by Alexandra K. Duncan criticized the display of graffiti in galleries because the white walls of a gallery cannot provide the same context as graffiti in the street. Some of the key points are that on the street, graffiti is illicit, unexpected, approachable, and accessible to all, but in a gallery, graffiti is commissioned, expected, closed off from contact, and only viewed by the upper-class society that visits museum. There is also a key difference between the static graffiti in a gallery and the tags on a train or subway car that rides throughout the city, and graffiti on canvas versus graffiti on rough, imperfect wall. Lastly, graffiti on the street is participating in a discourse with the surrounding graffiti, and this is not possible in a gallery.
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