I posted here the other day about a recent puzzling experience at the Pompidou, which houses the national museum of modern art in Paris. I thought the display of two photographs taken off the internet and filtered through some greens that took up an entire wall was artistically underwhelming. I couldn't figure out why that counted as art important enough to be displayed so significantly. In Paris. At the Pompidou.
But then I came across something by Stephen Weil, who was a foremost commentator on museums, and he cleared the whole thing up for me. In his book Beauty and the Beasts, he wrote: "But there is, I think, a great deal of harm in permitting the public to misinterpret what we are showing and why we are showing it. And to understand that, I think you must turn and look at how the public sees museums, especially art museums...
We who work in museums know that they serve a great many functions...But to the general public, I think, connoisseurship is what museums are about...To the public, museum is not merely a noun, a place; it is also an adjective, meaning 'quality,' meaning 'the best.' When the public describes something as 'a real museum piece,' I think it is referring to that object the way Matthew Arnold referred to certain things as 'touchstones,' specimens of the highest quality."
He continues: "The questions, then, are: What are our responsibilities when, as we constantly do, we show specimens of less than the highest quality?" (Note to self when I read this - WHAT?!?! Museums CONSTANTLY show specimens of less than the highest quality?? I am truly Joe Public. Jill, actually. Or maybe Joan.)
And then he tells this story.
"I was in a large midwestern art museum a few weeks ago with somebody who was quite knowledgeable about paintings but not about museums. In one of the impressionist galleries, there is a particular spot that is clearly the most prominent place in the room: a panel, running from floor to ceiling. You see it - a very long view of it - when you come in. On it was a Degas sketch that was, I thought, one of the weakest things in the gallery. There were marvelous paintings on both the side walls, with just this sketch hanging on the panel. The woman I was with looked puzzled and said, 'I just don't understand why that's hanging there.' I said, 'I'll bet you anything that it's the only thing in the room from a living donor.' It was. It was there to please the donor, and the public had no way to interpret that. They just had to believe that the museum thought it was the finest painting in the room."
Clickety-clickety-click (the sound of things in my brain sliding into place).
