New York Diary

On Curation

I went to the Metropolitan Museum yesterday, where I spent most of my time in their current exhibit on Bohemian art. I most enjoyed the bit where they presented several illuminated Jewish works alongside a series of similarly illuminated Christian Bibles. The curatorial notes explained that, in the 13th and most of the 14th centuries, the Jews and Christians of Prague were engaged in deep intellectual and religious exchange. This was reflected in their artwork and their manuscripts, among other things. The notes closed by inviting the viewer to compare the styles of the different illuminations, noting their varying artistic interpretations of the same events, as well as their numerous similarities.

This was an invitation that I accepted wholeheartedly, and the comparison was one that I very much enjoyed. The exercise got me to thinking, too: is this not curation at its best?

Too often, curators take the easy way out. Art is grouped by date and place of origin, and nothing more. A Van Gogh? Put it in the room with all the other Van Goghs. A Rodin? Put it in the European Sculpture garden. A red-figure urn? Put it with all the other old Greek stuff. And put the painting by Jan van Eyck in with all the other Dutch portraiture; group all the mummies together in that other room; we'll put 18th century Spanish art here; let's send all the tapestries out to the Cloisters. And, wham-bam-boom, the museum is arranged.

What the modest little exhibit on illumination asked me to do, however, was compare along different lines. Objects were grouped together not solely because they were from the same time and place, but because they were stylistically and subjectively reminiscent of each other. Look at how the artists played with each other's work, the arrangement insisted. Look at how these different folks treated their very similar subject matter. This was an active and thoughtful curation.

If I were a curator, here is what I'd do. I'd put a tormented German crucifixion scene--a Grunewald in the National Gallery in Washington, DC, with a gruesome Christ and a dark and angry sky--next to a Floretine painting of the same subject, with a bright blue sky and a pacific, uncontorted Christ gazing down calmly at the mourners below. I'd toss in Dali's floating Cruxifiction for good measure, and a golden crucifix for liturgical use in a Parisian cathedral. I'd put a Coptic version of the same scene, embroidered onto religious vestements, on a nearly wall. If I could get it, I'd also include a print done in Reubens's workshop, currently housed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; it features a pained Christ hanging heavily on the cross in what must have been his moment of doubt, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?. It is a horrific and striking scene that I drew over and over again when I was in high school.

Then I'd ask the viewers to think about these several pieces, all inspired by the same story, all depicting the same characters perhaps, yet so very different. I'd try to point out possible influences on each of the artists, and the way the works interact; the Dali is as much a comment on earlier crucifixion scenes as it is a comment on the crucifixion itself, for example. I'd ask the viewers to truly compare the pieces, to look closely at the art, to notice the differences that make each scene unique. That, I think, would be a truly provocative exhibit.

All of this is not to say that I have anything against the tried-and-true method of grouping by time and place, but it is to suggest that this is only one way to organize a museum or gallery--and to lament that it seems to be very nearly the only way that art museums are organized anymore. The Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, the British National Gallery, our American National Gallery, the Met, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the Philadelphia Museum--they're all organized after exactly the same fashion, and we grow up learning to group art in one very common way. But why? You could put 8 different representations of the Pieta side-by-side; you could put 13 still lifes (lives?) of tables with fruit on them next to each other--just imagine a direct comparison of Cezanne with Picasso, for example!--; you could put Greek urns next to Egyptian organ-jars next to Medieval Arab vases next to modern vases made by Chihuly; you could put Cleopatra's needle next to the Arc de Triomphe (theoretically, at least) and talk about architectural tributes to military victories. Heck, for that matter, you could place Jewish and Christian manuscripts side-by-side, some in Hebrew, some in Latin, and one in Czech(?), and you could ask museum-goers to compare them.

(Click the image for a larger version.)

posted by Skay @ 10:19 PM