Are Museums Taboo on TV?

Last night's Cézanne in Provence on PBS was, in a word, splendid. The National Gallery's curator, Philip Conisbee, though uncredited in the show's publicity, was (after Cézanne's art) the chief attraction, radiating quiet authority as he used the artist's biography and arcadian surroundings to illuminate the art. The camerawork was also deft, dissolving from actual provençal landscapes to their light-filled depictions on canvas, and sometimes tightly panning into the artworks, to give viewers a sense of physically entering into the painted countryside.

But why was the National Gallery exhibition, on which the show was based, never mentioned during the program? The hour was loaded with installation shots of the exhibition, which were never once identified as such. Even the credits at the end, which did acknowledge the museum show, went by so fast that you could not possibly know what they said, unless you were a speed-reading demon or had recorded the show and used the pause button (as I did). The "companion book" offered for sale, along with the program's video, at the end of the airing is the voluminous exhibition catalogue, again not identified---not even on the online ordering page.

Can it be that art museums are now considered too abstruse and esoteric to be mentioned in popular edutainment? Or were the presenters afraid that if they told you about the Washington exhibition, you might actually want to see it---impossible, because it's already closed.

As for me, I'll take Philip Conisbee over Nigel Spivey any day!