Going to Museums

 

Mostly, we do art museums wrong. In general, we do it from the best intentions – we are visiting a place we don’t live in, there’s a great museum there and we want to see everything.  But it doesn’t work. There are limits to how much you can really pay attention to, how long you can stay on your feet on hard floors, how long before you get hungry, tired of the crowds, sick of being inside.

We do this because we treat art museums as ‘education’, and each work of art within them as something we must learn to appreciate if we don’t already know and like it. So we’ll stand in front of some ghastly picture for 15 minutes because we are told the artist is important. Deep down we already know we are Philistines (the history of Modern Art has taught us that, if nothing else), so if we don’t like it, or ‘get it’, it is clearly our own fault. Kids are usually better about this – they like something or they don’t, they are interested or bored and don’t mind telling you – but kids are always the captives of their earnest adults.

It’s a terrible way to introduce kids to art but also a terrible thing to do to ourselves. You don’t have to like things, even if the label says ‘Picasso’ , ‘Warhol’ or ‘Twombley’. In fact, you don’t have to care one way or the other.

If you spend a lot of time in museums (I do) you’ll notice certain things about the way people behave there. These behaviors are reinforced by the layout and design of the galleries themselves. The center of the room is often a vast desert. There might be a severe looking, backless couch facing whatever the star exhibit of the room is but that’s it. That couch is almost always taken by either a bored child or people who are old enough to know you have to sit down now and then. So we walk into the rooms, turn to our right and start working our way around the walls – too close to really see the pictures (unless they are very small), but just in the right place to read the labels which tell us what we should like and why.

In an imaginary gallery of Impressionists on a Saturday afternoon, we read the first picture is a Monet. We know he’s important because we learned it in college art history. So we look. We can’t step back because there are 5 or 6 other people right behind us (including one explaining Monet’s importance to her sadly uneducated companion) and we are slightly uncomfortable having them peer over our shoulders. It takes a good deal of fortitude to stake out a good viewing position and hold it long enough to actually see the picture. We don’t stay too long in front of it, never get a good look at it and move on to the next. The entire experience is more about the labels and our own fear of cultural illiteracy than the pictures.

And if you think that’s bad, try getting a good look at the Mona Lisa.

Rinse and repeat for as long as it takes to work your way through the entire museum and you have a perfect recipe for an awful, exhausting day. There are better ways to do this. Before I get to them, let me point out that I have all kinds of problems with museums: their utter capitulation to academic art history, their collusion with galleries, auction houses, critics and prominent collectors to fix and manipulate values, and most importantly the crushing weight they place on contemporary art and artists, but all that said (and I will probably post about those another time), museums are still worth your time and even your money. How can you make museums a more enjoyable experience?

1. Choose the time for your visit wisely. Tues. or Wed. mornings are often the best but your mileage may vary. Avoid school tour days when possible, but I find kids better companions than pretentious adults so if that’s the choice I’ll take the kids.

2. Do a little research and choose exactly which galleries you want to see. If it’s a museum of any size you can’t see it all. Better to choose a few galleries you are really interested in and leave the rest. I rarely try to do more than 3. I used to go the Metropolitan in NY just to see one picture.

3. When you enter a gallery for the first time, go straight to the center of the room and look around. Which pictures call out to you? Which make you really want to look and learn more about them? Go to those and ignore the rest, at least at first.

4. Look at the picture first, not the label. Give it a good, long, relaxed look. Try to find what attracted you to it in the first place. You don’t have to be able to articulate or explain it. Then look at the label. Maybe make a note of the artist if it’s something you really like.

5. Feel free to dislike things – no matter who made them. Just because it’s a Picasso doesn’t mean it’s a good one – he made plenty of clunkers. And even if it is a ‘good one’, that doesn’t mean you have to like it. Pay attention to the stuff you like. Listening to your own response is much more important than reading the label and feeling an obligation. Here’s an example:

This is Boy With A Butterfly Net, by Matisse, in the Minneapolis Institute of Art. I think this picture is awful in nearly every respect. The head is awkward and doesn’t belong on the body, the right arm and hand are grotesque, the legs are just clumsy. The path makes no sense (look between his legs), the folds in the fabric don’t follow the body – I could go on. I love Matisse but this wasn’t his best day. Why try to fix that for him?

6. Finally, when you get tired, leave. If you feel you must see everything, remember that at the end you’ll remember very little except for what an ordeal it all was. Leave while you’re still having a good time. That will make it much more likely that you’ll want to do it again even if you never get another chance to go to that particular museum. The world is full of pictures to see, you might as well enjoy it when you do.

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