We are looking at the idea of museums
and who decides on how they are run, what’s in them, what’s worth more than
others, what’s more important, who are they run by, but more importantly who
are they run for? The idea of Public vs.
personal so the institution vs. private.
Museums have this idea of keeping
things safe but what is safe, if museums have dwindling funds how is there a guaranty
it is safe? Museums continue the story of culture, but culture is changing all
the time and ones culture maybe different to another’s. A museum is a static
notion. Does it preserve stuff or preserve the value of stuff. As all things
within the museum have been taken out of their original context.
“Museums are built on loss and its
recollection: there is no museum without the threat of erasure or incompletion,
no museum not shadowed by the imagination of the impending destruction of what
it therefore seeks to stabilize and maintain. Or, to be more exact, we can say
that the museum finds in loss its most powerful alibi…Museums defend
traditions, they remember and represent, gather together in collections and
exhibitions what needs to be rescued or exposed – whether as tradition or avant
grade, center or margin, orthodoxy or heterodoxy – because it is endangered, in
its physical existence or significance. Museums shelter not so much objects as
meanings, and their work is that or articulating, linking and arranging them in
a network or significance ”
From No Ends in Sight. Thomas Keenan
Take the V&A fashion galleries who
are these garments aimed at, the idea of elegance in design those of the elite
not the everyday. Who decided which pieces went into this collection and what
should be there, but the question is what am I not seeing and why am I not
seeing it?
This idea of what is the most
important or the most valuable in most cases has always been questionable.
So how do you value art, price,
artist, and quality? Is the most expensive always best? How do you put a piece
on art and who gives it that estimate price?
Take the national gallery in WWII they
moved art out of the city before they did children. They moved the art to
Bangor in wales 30th sep 1938 but again here we are judging a place
upon its importance why was Bangor chosen? Then when the bombing did start in
London Aug 1939 all pieces where moved again to Wales but this time to an
underground quarry, so then the question is raised is art for the person or the
institution, is it the memory of art. The removal of art didn’t go down with
the people so the whole meaning of the gallery had to be changed using other
forms of the arts they held concerts for the people, so were people counted as
less valuable than the art itself?
The recent Dutch art Museum heist also
questions what is more important to do with art. Is all about the money has the
cultural value been lost? But the sceptical around the theft has made it more
valuable, there is a sense of joy coming from the museum going wrong, not being
as safe as you think.
Is art becoming all about money? But then the money also creates sceptical,
take Damien Hirst Skull and the sceptical around how much it was worth, and
with it being so expensive it made people want to go and see it, this idea of a
bucket list something that you have to see, like the Mona Lisa why is there so
much hype around it?
The idea of the media sceptical is
also one that can change the whole narrative of a piece of work and make it not
worthy to be in a gallery anymore. David Hamilton’s work had been in many
exhibitions as well as playboy, until a story broke out in the media about
paedophiles, they then began to see his work in a whole new narrative and
branded his work as dirty, and morally corrupt but why was one story then link
to what is just art.
The history of a museum is always over
looked as you always get distracted by the art you don’t actually look at the
museum itself, as things are always collected within the museum over time and
not always displayed they are hidden why is this and who decides what is
displayed. And what supports the foundation of the museum what is the power of
things.
But when the museum is trying to be
transport and open, it adds another meaning but this then brings up more
questions. Jeff Wall Restoration (detail) Cibachrome transparency in display
case. Is this an upper class big brother, what do we get from watching them put
artwork up?
But
are we just looking at the obvious take Jeffrey Vallance Covert Wall Socket
Exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum Drawing 1998. He placed his art over
plug sockets in different galleries and it took people a long time to realise
they where there but he decided where his work went not the institution so do
we look at what we want or what we are told to look at.
But with the culture of museums
changing and our own cultures changing, what is anything worth anymore we are
such a consumerism society is our own rubbish art? Richard Wentworth Questions
of Taste 1997. Installation British Museum (part of collected exhibition) has
culture been discarded on the floor like rubbish how is that preserving culture.
Museums don’t attract a diverse
audience, so does that question the art or the institution, whose story and power
are they trying to protect / what are they hiding. Culture vs. money. So should
we go against the order and not take power at face value.
“Out of the closets and into the
Museums, libraries, architectural monuments, concert halls, bookstores, recording
studios and film studios of the world. Everything belongs to the inspired and
dedicated thief. …Words, colours, light, sounds, stone, wood, bronze belong to
the living artist. They belong to anyone who can use them. Loot the Louvre! A
bas l’originalite, the sterile and assertive ego that imprisons us as it
creates. Vive le sol-pure, shameless, total. We are not responsible. Steal
anything in sight”
William Burroughs.
I think we all need to look behind the
piece of art and make our own judgment on art, art is for the audience and not
the institution take what you want from it, not media sceptical, no value on
price, no signs or labels art is for the people!!!
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