Change usually happens gradually, but every now and then there’s a big rupture. I think art museums have been gradually taking a turn in recent years that is now accelerating as a new generation of directors take over the top slots at America’s big museums.
In the last several weeks, I’ve talked with a fair number of directors — a few over 50, but most younger. While there’s no unanimity — on almost anything — there is a decided movement toward rejecting the idea of museum as “cultural cathedral,” a moniker directors were once proud of.
The popular new metaphor, as I write in an article that will appear in Tuesday’s edition of The Wall Street Journal, is the “town square.”
As an old saying goes, “name it and frame it.” What you call something matters to how it is perceived, and some museum directors want their domains to be social places, interactive, participatory. They see that as a way to draw new generations and new ethnic groups.
This trend is most pronounced at contemporary museums, and it goes way beyond the “populism” that museums like Brooklyn have been criticized for, more because it hasn’t worked than because it’s not right. (I was reminded of this by the Boston Globe article by Geoff Edgers in Sunday’s paper on the American Repertory Theater: “To Change, Or Not To Change? Attendance Is Way Up, But Some Say ART’s Artistic Director Has Gone Too Commercial.”)
As you may guessed, I have my doubts about the town square metaphor. Great art requires contemplation; it reveals itself slowly, over time, not in one glance. I don’t question the motives of the new directors, or their goals, just their methods.
And I have just one question: What’s wrong with a cathedral? They come in all kinds of designs. They’re accessible to all. They’re quiet, but not silent. If they suggest a certain mode of behavior, of respect, what’s wrong with that? Doesn’t art, too, deserve respect?