Clicking through Facebook last month, I saw a photo of bright orange statues on a lush green lawn. 120 orange statues of women in STEM fields were going to be exhibited in the Smithsonian Gardens during March for Women’s History Month, an AP story by Ashraf Khalil read.
My analytical mind kicked in and thoughts tumbled. First: “Why are they orange?” Second: “Is there a reason?” Then: “Surely there’s a reason. Bright orange wouldn’t have been chosen without a reason. Was it a symbolic reason or a practical reason? Or both?” I reread the article. I read the project’s website. I watched promotional videos and media coverage about the exhibition. Nothing to explain the orange.
I was stuck. I couldn’t move any further in my experience. The orange was a barrier. Not the orange itself; I have nothing against orange. The barrier was that I was missing the knowledge to decode the meaning of the statues, to understand them – if not fully, then understand them well enough – because of this color choice.
Another possibility entered my mind: did everyone else understand the color except for me? Was my interest in the color unique (meaning, weird)? Did no one else hit an interpretive speed bump when looking at statues of brilliant women that are the color of traffic cones? I know full well that my experience is not universal. After all, a mantra of this blog is that there is no one audience, no one audience experience. I have no visual art or art history training. Maybe I was just out of my area of expertise and if I’d taken a couple of studio art classes rather than being obsessed with theater when I was in college I would understand the color reference.
“Wait a minute,” I thought. “I shouldn’t need to have taken a college-level art history class to make meaning out of this exhibition. They don’t intend for this exhibition to be viewed only by art history experts; it’s an exhibition for the general public, with children as a prime audience.” My question was reasonable. Answerable, yet unanswered, even after about an hour of searching.
Should I need a piece of art explained to me in order to “get it”? Or should its meaning be obvious?
Inscrutable art is a barrier. On good days, it’s a mystery or a puzzle that inspires learning. On bad days, the viewer feels excluded, mocked or stupid. Even worse is the most frequent response: shrugging shoulders, the viewer walks away, and their apathy towards art silently grows.
Hundreds of times I’ve been told by audience members, strangers, friends, acquaintances, co-workers, college students (including those studying the arts!), “I don’t understand art/music/dance/theater.” It’s said with some combination of resignation, anxiety, apology, and embarrassment. I’m sad when I hear this. These responses are a sign of failure of those of us who make and share art, certainly not the audience.
Seema Rao, in a February 2022 post on the Museum 2.0 blog, questioned whether museums even wanted people to come. They don’t act like it, she writes. “Do we really want people to visit?” she asks. Museums make the visit uncomfortable, with inconvenient hours, judgy staff, and uncomfortable seating in the galleries, when there even is seating. “In truth, I suspect what happens is that galleries get designed with the goal of getting a certain intellectual point across. The teams forget that humans will need to enjoy the space to even notice there is a point.”
Works of art are shared with the intention of an impact, for the audience to think something, feel something, do something.
Maybe the person sharing the work has a specific response they’re trying to elicit, perhaps not. If they didn’t want a response of some kind, the work wouldn’t be shared.
Or so you’d think. As Seema Rao points out, barriers get thrown up exactly by the people doing the sharing: special knowledge and physical endurance are just the beginning. There’s nothing wrong with complex works – just give the viewers what they need to engage, whether that’s information or a welcoming environment.
Back to the orange statues. I could easily have just dropped it, as I have many, many times when I come across art that I don’t understand. I could have shrugged my shoulders and let it go. But I’m invested in the progress of women in our society. I want girls to be inspired towards STEM and the arts, and whatever else they want to do. So I wanted to know the intention behind this particular choice of a highly visible exhibition. I was not choosing apathy on this day.
When the Smithsonian posted on Facebook and Twitter about the exhibition, I asked my question in the comments: “Why are the statues orange?”
Before I posted this question, I wondered: Would I look stupid? I am an arts professional after all. Would others mock me in the comments? Would I be ignored? Would I get a patronizing response? Would someone pointed out that the information was *right there* on the website and I had missed it?
I took the chance. Others commented “I was wondering the same thing.” My comment got likes and retweets. The Smithsonian responded quickly on both platforms:
Now I had enough information to go on. Now I could interpret for myself, accessing my life experience and my knowledge. Now I was engaged.
What’s the right amount of information or explanation to accompany art works? That’s for artists and those who show art to decide for themselves.
My answer is: enough to pre-empt the shrugging of shoulders and creeping apathy. Enough to engage.
Thank you for so eloquently framing the issues that many audience members experience. As a musician, I ponder how expressions are digested by listeners through time. For example, what is enough to express intention and engage but not so much to induce overwhelm? You have given me more food for thought about the mechanisms of engagement.
My initial reaction was the same as Ms. Grannemann’s, but, in my opinion, no amount of extra information makes these orange plastic statues a satisfying honorarium. I think the bright orange color blurs the features of the individual women, and by distracting the audience, belittles the importance of the the womens’ achievements. Rather than commemorating and honoring, I think the choice of color belittles the women and their achievements and turns them into oversized toys, as if they were not important enough to honor with statues in a color which, instead of distracting, would make their likenesses accessible and easy to recognize and admire. The color is a terribly unfortunate choice which is provoking laughter, puzzlement and derision rather than the inspiration that was intended.
“Now I was engaged,” “Engaged”? On a deeply personal level? Touched by, moved by, inspired by, as many are by the ‘Boston Women’s Memorial‘ (true “art” by the way), which honors (from left) Lucy Stone, Abigail Adams, and Phillis Wheatley. Hannah Grannemann doesn’t say what she means. For more on the Memorial see this photo.