Amy Whitaker -- Museum legs: fatigue and hope in the face of art
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Loosely connected but interesting notes on art and art museums.

There are some subjects on which I want interesting questions more
than I want answers.  That is especially true with respect to art
and art museums, where I believe there are few objective answers
and where each of us has answers that are specific to our own
individual wants and needs.  So, some questions:

- What's the purpose or mission of an art museum?

- Should all art museums be trying to serve the same purpose?

- Could it be that the founder or owners or directors or curators
  should be allowed to determine the mission and orientation of the
  museum?  Or, must they always consult with their visitors or
  members?  And, if they should consult with their visitors, then
  is it true that "the customer is always right"?

- Should an art museum attempt to *educate* me about art,
  especially the art in that museum?  Or, is it enough for it to
  merely make the works or art available so that I can experience
  them.

Read Whitaker's book carefully and, if you care about art,
encouraged to think about these questions and many more.

I wish that Whitaker had spent a bit more time on one of my
favorite questions, specifically whether a copy of a work of art
can be as useful or valuable as the original, and why or why not? 
Many works of art can only be copies, for example, cast bronze
statues, prints made from wood block carvings and etchings, and
lithographs.  Now that we have such easy access to digital
photography and now that such high quality digital photographic
equipment is available and especially now that there is ready
access to image manipulation software (Photoshop, The GIMP, etc),
this becomes a more salient issue.  I'm suspicious of claims about
the importance of authenticity or the original.  But, most
important, I feel that thinking through issues about copies versus
originals of works of art helps each of us understand what is
important in art for ourselves.  And, you may as well get used to
it, because for people under 25 who have become so used to copies
of movies, music, and images, this is a non-issue.

One set of the issues that concerns Whitaker most are those that center
around the commercialization of the business of art museums.  She'd
likely be uncomfortable with labeling an art museum as a business. 
And, she worries that when the price of admission to an art museum
or an exhibition at one becomes more than negligible, then the
visitor's experience becomes an economic transaction, one in which
the visitor is concerned about getting entertainment value for
the money more than with having an experience of and with art
that enriches and expands her/his life.

And, this issue is becoming more significant, as is everything that
involves money, during the economic recession, when support for art
and art museums shrinks.  I my own city, children from local
schools now get either field trip to the local art museum or the
local historical museum, but not both.  In times like these, the
value and experience of art gets lost in the finances, if you are
still able to afford the visit to the museum, let alone a trip to a
remote museum, at all.

One problem that I have with the book has to do with the level of
intellect for which it is intended.  Whitaker is smart; I'm
simple-minded.  Some of Whitaker's analogies are mysterious to me;
I don't get the connection.  Some explanations that she gives are
too complex or too vague for me to "get".  You are likely to have
less trouble connecting the dots and understanding the connections. 
Still, ..., I do wish that an editor would have asked Whitaker to
"tighten things up" and to think about her readers.

The book discusses a variety of themes, issues, and ideas.  That
makes me a little uncomfortable, because I'd rather have a single
theme that I can follow and can use to make sense of everything
else.  The variety of subjects discussed makes the book seem like a
loosely connected set of magazine articles.  However, the themes and
ideas in this book are, for me at least, interesting and important.
Here are some of those themes.

1. There is one issue that I believe is very important, but I wonder
   whether Whitaker's claims about it are true.  She believes that
   experience with art encourages and helps us with independent
   thinking and with imaginative thinking.  I hope she's right, but
   I wonder.  Also I believe that reading and thinking in terms of
   words and symbols is as much or more important for independent
   and imaginative thinking than thinking in visual imagery.  But,
   either way, you will be interested in what Whitaker has to say
   about it.

2. Another theme that Whitaker brings up several times is the idea
   that you cannot understand or appreciate or experience art unless
   you create art yourself.  She seems to say that you must at least
   try to draw or paint in order to learn enough to understand what
   other draftsmen and painters have done.  I'm suspicious about
   that.  In part because I'm poor at creating art myself, and don't
   want to admit that I can't benefit from and be enriched by that
   art done by others.

3. One idea that is particularly dear to Whitaker is the importance
   of recognizing and supporting new, contemporary artists.  Since
   Whitaker worked at MoMA (the Museum of Modern Art) in New York
   and the Tate in London, that's to be expected.  But, a
   proposition like that, while admirable, has its problems.  For
   example, how do we separate the good from the bad, the worthwhile
   from the rubbish, especially when so much of it looks like "my 5
   year-old could do that", as it is often so tempting to say.
   Whitaker's stance here seems more reasonable when considered in
   the light of her encouragement that we enter an art museum with a
   attitude of "openness".  In particular, she wants each of us to
   view any given work of art and to appreciate it, analyze it,
   enjoy it, etc, on its own terms and especially on *our* own
   terms, *without* being restricted by the text in the white card
   on the wall next to the work or the text in the museum catalog or
   the comments by the curator in a lecture we attended or by the
   comments of any other expert, for that matter.

Summary: It's an interesting book with a rich collection of
interesting subjects.  Give yourself a quiet place to sit and time
to think, and you'll be rewarded for it.

08/08/2010

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