Museums

In case you missed it, yesterday’s New York Times carried four letters from readers about my opinion piece in the Sunday Review section last week,  High Culture Goes Hands-On.

Here’s the link to the letters.

I’m pleased, and wrote that uncharacteristically hubristic headline for this post because since I last wrote about the piece, here, I’ve been beaten up on some blogs. I was disturbed by them at first, but it struck me as I read them that they made their argument, to a great degree, using ad hominem attacks of me. They complained about the tone of the piece — oddly, since it was quite unemotional and dispassionate. When my critics made other arguments, they were often off-target. One writer spent his entire article refuting something I never said — that contemporary art was bad. He dredged up historical references, like criticism of the Impressionists and much art since then — all facts that had nothing to do with my piece, which was about museums catering to the public that is in search of participatory, interactive experiences all the time.

Another said he was tired of reading all these conservative views in the Times. I wonder what he is actually reading, considering that Public Editor #1, Dan Okrent, answered the question, “Is the Times a Liberal Newspaper,” with the answer “Of course it is” way back in 2004.

One guy said I was taking the “fun” out of museums. For him, I am posting a sign I saw recently in the Tokyo National Museum, where they really take the fun out of visiting a museum. (It wouldn’t work here, would it? Please note that I am not advocating it.)

Still others confused my message with their worries about elitism. The two are not related, in my mind or in my essay.

But many more people agreed and urged me not to be intimidated. The Times normally prints letters that represent the whole of what was legitimately said and this indicates to me that it received many more positive letters than negative ones.

A few articulated a point I did not make as well as I might have in my essay: viewing great art is, or should be, an experience in and of itself. Museums should be cultivating the ability of people to have those sorts of art experiences, rather than offering participatory experiences that are, to my mind, much less enlightening.

For those of you who may have missed it, the front page of the Sunday New York Times’s Review section this week carried an essay I wrote, headlined High Culture Goes Hands-On. Print readers also got a deck: “Visitor engagement and participation are changing the nature of museums. And not always in good ways.”

So I’ve had a couple of very busy days. Everyone who has written or called me, naturally, agreed with my thesis, which is not easy to boil down to one sentence. If I had to, it would be something along the lines of this: Art museums are on the verge of making a grand mistake, luring visitors by giving them participatory art experiences rather simply providing them with the opportunity to experience viewing glorious works of art. As I wrote:

In this kind of world, the thrill of standing before art — except perhaps for works by boldface-name artists like van Gogh, Vermeer, Monet and Picasso (and leaving aside contemporary artists who draw attention by being outrageously controversial) — seems not quite exciting enough for most people.

Glenn Lowry, the director of MoMA, advocating for “experience museums,” put it this way in a speech in Australia:

…museums must make a “shift away from passive experiences to interactive or participatory experiences, from art that is hanging on the wall to art that invites people to become part of it.” And, he said, art museums had to shed the idea of being a repository and become social spaces.

Needless to say, most museum directors and curators are doing this with good intentions — they are trying to attract more people in an age of split-second attention spans and multi-tasking.

I think this is an important issue — and readers must have agreed, as my essay landed on the most-emailed list for a while. It’s important because museums — like businesses — “train” people to come for visits, and with these experience/participatory activities they are training people to come for reasons that are not core to the museum. When people don’t find those expectations satisfied, they won’t go.

Here’s a parallel: When museums trained people to come for special — often blockbuster – exhibitions, they soon discovered that many people didn’t visit their permanent collections. Now, in troubled economic times, as special exhibitions have become fewer and have lasted longer, museums have tried to retrain people to come to see their permanent collections — and it’s a tough slog.

It’s also important because looking at great art actually is an experience on its own — or should be. People may be losing that ability, given the current environment, but should museums hasten its demise? I don’t think so.

I could go on about this topic, but you get my drift.

The Times opened the piece to reader comments, and last I looked more people agreed with me than not — though there were some major dissenters, one of whom accused me of “sour grapes.” Another said I was “cranky.” Some thought I was being exclusionary. I’m not — I want museums to be open to, and attractive to, everyone, AND for the right reasons. Not, as one commenter put it, because the museum is a “playground.”

I had two favorite comments:

From David Underwood: “Does this mean when I go to a presentation of Salome, they are going to offer me a head on a platter? Or am I going to get burned at the stake instead of Azucena?”

And a limerick from Larry Eisenberg:

Museums must become interactive?
I wish they were more retroactive,
A Velasquez one views
Is a joy to peruse,
Museums will be counterattractive!

Photo Credit: Martin Creed’s Work No. 965: Half the air in a given space, Courtesy of Far-Flung Travels (top); Big Bambu, at the Met, bottom