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Art museums are a failure. I wrote about this in 2015, that tumblr post is reproduced below:
Imagine the modern art wing of a museum.
These design choices are all in the service of making the art museum the best possible habitat for art. The museum is a neutral void into which we place great works of beauty to be appreciated. The work shines. It’s unburdened by context. It’s alluring and impressive and an utter fucking cipher if you don’t already know why it’s interesting.
Art museums, while being very nice places for art, are fucking miserable places for people. (And I say this as someone who absolutely loves art museums.) They’re hostile. It’s easy to get lost. All the expository information is given in either tiny little bricks of text next to the art (and it’s boring) or in big sprawling banners of text next to the door of the gallery, totally divorced from the art (and it’s still boring).
So we walk into this awful space, with its glaring emptiness and its lack of anything friendly and we think “I don’t understand this, this is ugly not-art, why did this cost millions of dollars, I would like millions of dollars and nobody has given it to me so I can make ugly not-art.”
How dare the modern art museum lead us to think this. We have come through its doors, willing to be awed, willing to engage with beauty, and the art museum punches us in the nose. It says “I am a museum so this art is good art. If you don’t understand, you’re stupid and I don’t care.”
Art appreciation is bullshit. It puts all the burden of interest on the viewer and requires they walk in with extensive knowledge of an esoteric field. I have never been to a natural history museum that sits back and asks me to appreciate the bones. I’m not a fucking paleontologist and they know that, so they step up to help.
Museums can generate curiosity! Engagement! Wonder! The best museums do this by prompting us to think of a question, and then offering up the object that answers that question. That’s exciting! It makes us feel powerful and smart!
Say you are wandering a museum, wondering how the horse got its hooves, perhaps because you saw a skeleton that highlighted the hooves of the horse and their articulation. You wander into a little room full of fossil feet from the ancestors of the horse, slowly progressing from something that looks like a paw to something that looks like a hoof, accompanied by descriptive text. The most important text is large and can be read from a few steps away, while the more detailed information is smaller, so if you are curious you may step forward and read on. The museum has masterfully given you the tools to answer your own question.
Modern art museums almost never do this and it’s very frustrating because there’s no reason they can’t.
There is no reason for these museums to be interesting only for people who have taken classes in art history.
I think that part of why modern art museums think they can get away with this is that they are allowed to get away with it in their older collections. We are pretty happy to walk through a huge gallery of Dutch still life paintings because they’re a spectacle. We see them and baffle at the utter impossibility of how such a wonderful thing could be made. It is pretty, and we don’t mind so much that we’re being condescended to, denied any deeper understanding or education because the museum has assumed that all we want is to gape at a nice picture.
Then we walk out of that wing and into the modern art wing and everything is blocky and off-putting. Of course we don’t instantly like it; in the previous gallery the art was easy to love, but now the art is asking a lot more of the viewer. Meanwhile the museum shrugs and continues to help 0%.
What if when you looked at an old Dutch painting and wondered “how did they do that?” the museum gave you the tools to answer that question. What if you were then shown x-rays of the painting to see the process of revision, or encouraged to compare a photograph of a vase to a painting of the same.
What if when you looked at a Frank Stella painting you had first been led to ask “why are paintings rectangular?” or “what is the difference between a painting and a sculpture?” ”Is a painting only beautiful when it depicts something lovely or can the painting itself (the canvas, the board, the paint) be beautiful?” These are questions that I already know to ask because someone sat me down in a class with powerpoint and flashcards and taught me to ask them, but not everyone in the museum has that because not everyone in the museum is a giant art nerd! Can you imagine a world where everyone is a giant art nerd? Awful thought. We would all kill each other immediately.
If modern art museums extended a hand, I honestly think we would reach back. Modern art is full of cheeky, delightful moments that I want to share with people every time I drag them through the Art Since 1950 gallery. Ad Reinhardt and and Yves Klein are hilarious bastards and I’m certain their sense of artistic humor has mass appeal. If only the art museum would let us all in on the joke.
Art museums are making small steps towards being less hostile. Guided audio tours help, but the pace is slow, the headphones isolating, and the viewer passively receives facts instead of becoming curious and seeking them out. There is a little more seating. There is a little more interest in displaying process documentation and artist interviews. However, these things are not the norm and they are not enough.
I often look at museums and galleries and cannot distinguish between the two. In a museum the public wishes to appreciate and learn about the art; in a gallery the avant-garde wishes to evaluate and purchase the art. With such different audiences and goals, surely they should look nothing alike. And yet, they are the same.
Imagine the modern art wing of a museum.
- Spare white walls.
- Intense, even lighting.
- Hard wooden floors.
- No seating.
- Maze-like, interconnected galleries.
- Small plaques identifying the artist, year and title in clean sans-serif font.
These design choices are all in the service of making the art museum the best possible habitat for art. The museum is a neutral void into which we place great works of beauty to be appreciated. The work shines. It’s unburdened by context. It’s alluring and impressive and an utter fucking cipher if you don’t already know why it’s interesting.
Art museums, while being very nice places for art, are fucking miserable places for people. (And I say this as someone who absolutely loves art museums.) They’re hostile. It’s easy to get lost. All the expository information is given in either tiny little bricks of text next to the art (and it’s boring) or in big sprawling banners of text next to the door of the gallery, totally divorced from the art (and it’s still boring).
So we walk into this awful space, with its glaring emptiness and its lack of anything friendly and we think “I don’t understand this, this is ugly not-art, why did this cost millions of dollars, I would like millions of dollars and nobody has given it to me so I can make ugly not-art.”
How dare the modern art museum lead us to think this. We have come through its doors, willing to be awed, willing to engage with beauty, and the art museum punches us in the nose. It says “I am a museum so this art is good art. If you don’t understand, you’re stupid and I don’t care.”
Art appreciation is bullshit. It puts all the burden of interest on the viewer and requires they walk in with extensive knowledge of an esoteric field. I have never been to a natural history museum that sits back and asks me to appreciate the bones. I’m not a fucking paleontologist and they know that, so they step up to help.
Museums can generate curiosity! Engagement! Wonder! The best museums do this by prompting us to think of a question, and then offering up the object that answers that question. That’s exciting! It makes us feel powerful and smart!
Say you are wandering a museum, wondering how the horse got its hooves, perhaps because you saw a skeleton that highlighted the hooves of the horse and their articulation. You wander into a little room full of fossil feet from the ancestors of the horse, slowly progressing from something that looks like a paw to something that looks like a hoof, accompanied by descriptive text. The most important text is large and can be read from a few steps away, while the more detailed information is smaller, so if you are curious you may step forward and read on. The museum has masterfully given you the tools to answer your own question.
Modern art museums almost never do this and it’s very frustrating because there’s no reason they can’t.
There is no reason for these museums to be interesting only for people who have taken classes in art history.
I think that part of why modern art museums think they can get away with this is that they are allowed to get away with it in their older collections. We are pretty happy to walk through a huge gallery of Dutch still life paintings because they’re a spectacle. We see them and baffle at the utter impossibility of how such a wonderful thing could be made. It is pretty, and we don’t mind so much that we’re being condescended to, denied any deeper understanding or education because the museum has assumed that all we want is to gape at a nice picture.
Then we walk out of that wing and into the modern art wing and everything is blocky and off-putting. Of course we don’t instantly like it; in the previous gallery the art was easy to love, but now the art is asking a lot more of the viewer. Meanwhile the museum shrugs and continues to help 0%.
What if when you looked at an old Dutch painting and wondered “how did they do that?” the museum gave you the tools to answer that question. What if you were then shown x-rays of the painting to see the process of revision, or encouraged to compare a photograph of a vase to a painting of the same.
What if when you looked at a Frank Stella painting you had first been led to ask “why are paintings rectangular?” or “what is the difference between a painting and a sculpture?” ”Is a painting only beautiful when it depicts something lovely or can the painting itself (the canvas, the board, the paint) be beautiful?” These are questions that I already know to ask because someone sat me down in a class with powerpoint and flashcards and taught me to ask them, but not everyone in the museum has that because not everyone in the museum is a giant art nerd! Can you imagine a world where everyone is a giant art nerd? Awful thought. We would all kill each other immediately.
If modern art museums extended a hand, I honestly think we would reach back. Modern art is full of cheeky, delightful moments that I want to share with people every time I drag them through the Art Since 1950 gallery. Ad Reinhardt and and Yves Klein are hilarious bastards and I’m certain their sense of artistic humor has mass appeal. If only the art museum would let us all in on the joke.
Art museums are making small steps towards being less hostile. Guided audio tours help, but the pace is slow, the headphones isolating, and the viewer passively receives facts instead of becoming curious and seeking them out. There is a little more seating. There is a little more interest in displaying process documentation and artist interviews. However, these things are not the norm and they are not enough.
I often look at museums and galleries and cannot distinguish between the two. In a museum the public wishes to appreciate and learn about the art; in a gallery the avant-garde wishes to evaluate and purchase the art. With such different audiences and goals, surely they should look nothing alike. And yet, they are the same.
Thus, the failure of the modern art museum.
Ever since writing this essay, I've kept coming back to an imaginary art museum that solves these problems. In my mind I've described enough exhibits for it to fill wings and wings. I've been thinking about turning those thoughts into a series of essays/blog posts for four years. Now I'm going to try to do it.
So, incoming: THE IMAGINARY HANDS-ON ART MUSEUM. I want to share my dream of a children's art museum. One where you can touch things, one where you learn. This is what, in a different universe where I went into museum studies, I would devote my life to.
