Protect Me From What You Want
Today from our friends at Glasstire, we bring you Christina Rees’ essay on the “making [of] museums into happy-clappy community centers,” written in response to the controversial article “Everybody’s an Art Curator” in the Wall Street Journal. As Rees points out: “No other serious profession seems to open itself up to this ‘the public knows best’ mentality as much as that of art. I cannot imagine the NFL—a very public entertainment—asking me to recruit players and rewrite the rules to my liking… It’s incredibly insulting to the professionals and artists who have dedicated their entire careers to the study and making and understanding of art.” This article was originally published on October 27, 2014.
Logo of the sports drink “Brawndo,” from the 2006 movie Idiocracy, directed by Mike Judge.
The dumbing down of the art world continues apace.
At first glance, the headline “Everybody’s an Art Curator” of this article had me thinking the Wall St. Journal was merely delving back into the ongoing use of the word “curate” for non-art things, as in, nowadays people “curate” their own bookshelves, etc. Anything that can be grouped or categorized along someone’s tastes or idea or theme is considered “curated.” I don’t care. Language goes through these changes.
But as I read the subheading and first paragraph, it was clear that the story was about the general public being invited into the traditional halls of real art and then making the decisions about what goes on there, beyond the kids’ hands-on sections (or outdoor billboards): We’re talking “curating” an art museum. This is for the sake of repopularizing the museum experience. Keeping the doors open, really.
This isn’t that new or surprising. For years now, museums have been trying out all kinds of novel ways to get the public back through their doors in this world of neverending entertainment options. Encouraging non-art people to feel validated and involved in what has been, in our increasingly dumbed-down world, categorized as “elitist” is one way to solve the problem. Museum directors are pressured into tapping new crowds. Some of the “crowdsourced” or interactive shows mentioned in the WSJ piece seem, in isolation, mostly harmless. It’s the slippery slope that worries me.
