{"id":160,"date":"2022-03-14T16:30:03","date_gmt":"2022-03-14T21:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/?p=160"},"modified":"2022-03-14T16:30:07","modified_gmt":"2022-03-14T21:30:07","slug":"i-dont-get-it-or-the-mystery-of-the-orange-statues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/2022\/03\/14\/i-dont-get-it-or-the-mystery-of-the-orange-statues\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI don\u2019t get it.\u201d Or, The Mystery of the Orange Statues"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>
\n

Clicking through Facebook last month, I saw a photo of bright orange statues on a lush green lawn<\/a>. 120 orange statues of women in STEM fields were going to be exhibited in the Smithsonian Gardens during March for Women\u2019s History Month, an AP story by Ashraf Khalil read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My analytical mind kicked in and thoughts tumbled. First: \u201cWhy are they orange?\u201d Second: \u201cIs there a reason?\u201d Then: \u201cSurely there\u2019s a reason. Bright orange wouldn\u2019t have been chosen without a reason. Was it a symbolic reason or a practical reason? Or both?\u201d I reread the article. I read the project\u2019s website. I watched promotional videos and media coverage about the exhibition. Nothing to explain the orange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was stuck. I couldn\u2019t 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<\/strong> \u2013 if not fully, then understand them well enough<\/span> \u2013 because of this color choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019d taken a couple of studio art classes rather than being obsessed with theater when I was in college I would understand the color reference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Wait a minute,” I thought. “I shouldn\u2019t need to have taken a college-level art history class to make meaning out of this exhibition. They don\u2019t intend for this exhibition to be viewed only by art history experts; it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Should I need a piece of art explained to me in order to \u201cget it\u201d? Or should its meaning be obvious?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Inscrutable art is a barrier. On good days, it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hundreds of times I\u2019ve been told by audience members, strangers, friends, acquaintances, co-workers, college students (including those studying the arts!), \u201cI don\u2019t understand art\/music\/dance\/theater.\u201d It\u2019s said with some combination of resignation, anxiety, apology, and embarrassment. I\u2019m 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seema Rao, in a February 2022 post on the Museum 2.0 blog<\/a>, questioned whether museums even wanted people to come. They don\u2019t act like it, she writes. \u201cDo we really want people to visit?\u201d she asks. Museums make the visit uncomfortable, with inconvenient hours, judgy staff, and uncomfortable seating in the galleries, when there even is seating. \u201cIn 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Works of art are shared with the intention of an impact, for the audience to think something, feel something, do something. <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Maybe the person sharing the work has a specific response they\u2019re trying to elicit, perhaps not. If they didn\u2019t want a response of some kind, the work wouldn\u2019t be shared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or so you\u2019d 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\u2019s nothing wrong with complex works \u2013 just give the viewers what they need to engage, whether that\u2019s information or a welcoming environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t understand. I could have shrugged my shoulders and let it go. But I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the Smithsonian posted on Facebook and Twitter about the exhibition, I asked my question in the comments: \u201cWhy are the statues orange?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I took the chance. Others commented \u201cI was wondering the same thing.\u201d My comment got likes and retweets. The Smithsonian responded quickly on both platforms:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s the right amount of information or explanation to accompany art works? That\u2019s for artists and those who show art to decide for themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My answer is: enough to pre-empt the shrugging of shoulders and creeping apathy. Enough to engage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I couldn’t get past the bright orange color of the 120 statues. Was I doing something wrong? How much information does an audience need to engage with a work of art?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,56,53],"tags":[64,63,61,62,60,59,58],"class_list":{"0":"post-160","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-barriers","8":"category-engagement","9":"category-interpretation","10":"tag-ashraf-khalil","11":"tag-associated-press","12":"tag-if-then-she-can-exhibit","13":"tag-lyda-hill-philanthropies","14":"tag-museum-2-0","15":"tag-seema-rao","16":"tag-smithsonian-gardens","17":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Pauline-Loroy-Woman-in-Museum-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1735&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdmYVE-2A","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions\/176"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}