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Musings on museums

Art in America, Oct, 2004 by Lee Rosenbaum

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But even the most respected museums, including their own (with the possible exception of the wealthy Getty), have occasionally compromised their missions for money--mounting glitzy shows with more popular appeal than serious purpose; using their collections, held in public trust, as cash cows by charging exorbitant fees for loans of art to sister institutions or even by renting works to commercial entities; accepting exhibition support from businesses with direct financial interests in the content of the shows they subsidize; positioning bauble-hawking gift shops at the exits to major exhibitions, thus abruptly dispelling art's aura with arrays of trinkets and the clatter of cash registers.

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D'Harnoncourt of Philadelphia offers a glimmer of hope in her observation that board members have become "much more muted in their sense that a museum is in fact like a profit-making corporation. Those voices were more voluble and more naive ten years ago than they are today." Similarly, MOMA's Lowry notes that corporate funders have grown more enlightened, spreading their support "over a much broader range of possible exhibitions. And I think the reality is that ... if we put together a program that is strong, clear, and articulate, it galvanizes support, whether it's from the public at large, an individual donor, or a corporation."

When it comes to overcrowding, though, museum directors are in a real bind. To a large degree, their oval performance is judged--by colleagues, the media and museum trustees--in terms of attendance. "The real measure of our success ought to be the quality of the museum experience," Lowry commented plaintively during the roundtable. "You cannot possibly have the kind of deep engagement with a work of art that John [Walsh] was talking about in a room with 500 people jostling each other, and yet we can't get off that attendance train." Astonishingly for a director about to open an enormous new facility, Lowry went on to assert that "we all show far too many works of art.... I think if you took the truly extraordinary works of art in each of our collections, the ones that are absolutely astounding, you wouldn't have a very big museum."

If Lowry can't get off the "attendance train," de Montebello of the Met is trapped on the exhibition train. He repeats his usual refrain from public-speaking engagements: "Museums have become so hyperactive that banners furled and unfurled on museum facades do not indicate, I'm afraid, the glow of health but rather the flush of fever." Here, too, attendance imperatives are fueling the fire: "the continuing pressure to keep the public coming in ever greater numbers translates in pressure to mount yet more exhibitions ... of a popular nature." Reducing such activity "would result in substantial deficits."

Although de Montebello expresses strong faith in the public's appetite for "programs born of serious ness of purpose and true educational motivation," a certain aristocratic condescension creeps into his comments about "strident and misguided archdemocratic voices," the danger of giving "too much ... information to the public" about conservators' work, his sense that "maybe we should pull back a little bit on the visibility issue" in responding to press queries, and his incomprehension as to why people have focused so tenaciously on questions surrounding restitution of Nazi loot and cultural patrimony. On the last, Lowry unperturbedly observed, "It was because it was an explosive issue and museums happened to be part of the tinder in the fire. What I think speaks well for museums is that in fact we were able to demonstrate to the media, and then through the media to the public, that we were in fact acting responsibly."

Musings on museums

Art in America, Oct, 2004 by Lee Rosenbaum

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