Spotlight on...

I was recently given the opportunity to lead two 'Spotlight Talks' in the galleries. The intention of the discussion is to literally place the spotlight on one work of art. As opposed to a cursory glance, the idea is to spend close to forty-five minutes with a piece. For the first talk, I chose to spotlight a work that I researched last semester: Marcel Duchamp's Fountain. For the second talk, I chose Bill Viola's Silent Mountain. I thought they would be particularly interesting because they are both -- to various degrees -- provocative. Still, the interest of this post is not to consider the aforementioned works of art (I will post the handout that accompanied each of my talks in ensuing posts). My interest is in considering who actually attended these presentations.

For the Spotlights, there is a definite entourage. While they're very pleasant, very intelligent people, I could help but identify a characteristic the majority of them shared: that is, they were almost all senior citizens. Of course, this is not surprising. Who else could come to the Museum at 11:00am on a weekday? Neither students, nor people with jobs. Indeed, the elderly generally constitute the majority of museum visitors. While I think this is unfortunate for all the younger people who are missing out, I must say that find it endearing. It is nice to think that retirees -- now that they've presumably worked, maybe raised a family -- like to spend new found free-time looking at art and improving their visual literacy.