Cezanne and Beyond, and Beyond

This past Friday was an opportunity for the press to come and see Cezanne and Beyond as a group. They were led by one of the show's curators, Joe Rishel, who offered interesting anecdotes about the artists and also offered some insight on his decisions. Perhaps prompted by the presence of all the critics at exhibition, I thought I'd contribute my own 'review.'

Let me say, without hesitation, that the show is fabulous. There are many, many gorgeous works of art; while most in the Education office raved about Picasso's large, colorful painting of a seated woman entitled The Dream, I was particularly enchanted by the very simple, pure, linear and geometric sketches of Ellsworth Kelly, and the beautiful still-lifes of Giorgio Morandi. The exhibition, in total, features close to 150 works of art by eighteen-or-so artists, including such heavyweights as Matisse, Mondrian, Marsden Hartley, Jeff Wall, Alberto Giacometti and Brice Marden.

But the virtue of this exhibition is not who is featured, but rather how things are featured. The idea -- or better, the thesis -- of the show is to demonstrate Cezanne's far reach. Picasso described the Frenchman as 'the father of us all.' Indeed, Cezanne's ability to nurture and teach becomes clearly evident. Ultimately, the show is most successfully understood in the context of conversation. More than Cezanne, the show provides a forum for dialogue by different artists, at different times.

Importantly, this is not simply art for art's sake, or worse, art as currency. The object is stripped of both its preciousness and its object-hood; what remains is a statement, or even an historical document. This is not connoisseurship, but instead, the perfect synthesis of two worlds in the museum, too often seen as distinct: the curatorial world and the educational world. Like with Dr. Albert Barnes before them, the curatorial team that hung Cezanne and Beyond was interested was in crafting a learning experience for the visitor out of placement and juxtaposition. By placing one painting of Mont Sainte-Victoire next to a map of the United States by Jasper Johns, it becomes apparent to the viewer that the particular lesson learned by Johns was the way we interact with omnipresent and ubiquitous images; by placing a Cezanne next to a Braque or Picasso, the lesson is clearly one of geometrical analysis; by placing Cezanne next to Mondrian, the lesson is one of the flatness and purity of the picture plane.

As much as the exhibition instructs, it also asks questions of the viewer, but it assumes no prior knowledge. The curators are actively engaging their audience, insisting that a connection exists among the great works. Ultimately, this is understood as the greatest dialogue.

In sum, I am aware of no other exhibit which is as interactive as this one.

6 February 2009

I would submit that it can be especially difficult for many of us to see past the trappings of any art museum. As much as there are canonical works that populate them, there are canonical notions of the institutions themselves that we are all subject to.

While it is the most obvious point of interaction between great art and the public, the museum is not without its problems. It is, after all, often perceived as an institution for the privileged. Admission fees are too high, the median age must be somewhere over 65, the grand architecture, the respectful silence and the preciousness of the work on the walls denote something inaccessible. So the idea that the institution would reach beyond its austere facade and invade something as new and hip as the internet is almost radical.

Social Tagging is an important -- and democratic -- means of expanding the search capabilities of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s website. By labeling or categorizing works of art, it grants users the ability to have greater access to the Museum’s Permanent Collection. Social Tagging is a completely open-ended utility: in other words, anyone can add to, or edit preexisting tags.

In order to utilize Social Tagging, click here. Users should browse the collections for a particular work—perhaps one they know well or one that strikes their eye. On any given webpage, for any given work of art, the user can scroll down to the Social Tagging function. By simply clicking on “Add Your Own Tags,” the user can help to make important information available to anyone interested. For example, on Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, I tagged R. Mutt and Armory Show as being relevant.

30 January 2009

Hopefully I've convinced you, or, at the very least, opened your mind to the notion that a museum is a pedagogical tool. As I asserted in the previous post, the institution should be conceived of as a means to an end. Needless to say, the hard part is determining exactly how to employ the various devices at the museum's disposal in order to instruct.

Let us consider, for the moment, audio-tours, as that is my task at the Philadelphia Museum of Art: Whether they are made available by cell phone, WiFi or with a traditional headset and player, there's one important principle that determines their format, which can be nicely summed up by the push/pull means of delivering information.

Museum visitors, in spite of the caricatures we are all prone to, are not a monolith. They comprise different age groups, socio-economic statuses and levels of education. The museum cannot and should not assume prior knowledge of art or art history. Indeed, most have had the wisdom and foresight not to become art history majors. So the question arises: what kind of experience is each individual looking for?

On the one hand, the visitor could be looking for nothing in particular. If there happens to be a Renoir or a Cezanne that the visitor finds aesthetically pleasing -- or similarly, aesthetically detestable -- he or she has the option of selecting that painting and hearing a short synopsis of its meaning, its content or the societal conditions which facilitated its conception and execution. This means of touring the museum falls under the category of pull. That is, the system is considered 'random access'; whatever the person is keen to hear about, he or she is able.

Is this a particularly effective means of teaching? I would suspect not. The reason being that the uninitiated art-viewer -- if he or she has only looked at Impressionist paintings only for their aesthetic value, for example -- has no frame of reference by which to analyze other works. It's as if each work of art is reduced simply to an object and is judged purely on its visual merit. He or she doesn't see the continuum of art, or its development over time. The notion that art is simply a filter for history is lost.

But if you as the museum educator or curator push a narrative unto a visitor, he or she has a more holistic understanding of visual language. It suddenly makes sense that Cezanne followed Manet, and Picasso followed Cezanne.

Still, this system (push) is not without its drawbacks. While certainly some do prefer to be led, others prefer to be more intrepid, and make their own way. It seems unfair -- undemocratic, perhaps -- to mediate their experience. Logistically, the museum may also be too big. Imagine trying to understand the development of Western art at the Louvre, or the Met, for example. It would be exhausting.

My intent here is not to provide an answer -- after all, I've only been an intern for a couple of weeks. But the question of how exactly any given collection should be presented is a question that every art institution faces. Ideally, each visitor would subject his or herself to a curator's presentation. But still, that doesn't account for human agency, and is indeed restricting and, most of all, unrealistic.