Retrofitting Radicalism

In my introductory post, I mentioned that the reason I choose to read The New Museum was that it was fascinating to me that a book published nearly a century ago could still be considered a relevant piece of museum theory. There are many pieces of Dana’s introduction that make it clear that this work is as revolutionary today as it was in 1917, and the fact that Dana was of this school of thought so long ago is at once humbling and alarming.

My thoughts on museums

My museum of choice has always been the art museum. As an artist and art history buff, I have loved art for as long as I can remember. It wasn’t until I was a freshman in college that I realized that only a small portion of people willingly go to museums in their free time, and fewer still actively enjoy and participate in the museum experience. Many museums are developing innovative programming and exhibits aimed at creating interactive, participatory museums devoted to visitor experience, and it is in this regard that art museums tend to fall behind.

It is for this main reason that I believe art museums are in need of a total redesign, from the ground up. No more cyclopean halls filled with a labyrinthine array of cases and corridors, no more tombstone labels and scholarly exhibit scripting written by curators for curators. Instead, the art museum needs to become an educational institution based on educating every person who walks in, and focused on becoming a community center. While this may be the goal according to many an art museum mission statement, the fact of the matter is that few people posses the tools to interpret the traditional art museum, because art education is a largely secondary subject in schools. Once children get to high school, studio art is almost completely optional. Art history, theory and communication classes are only offered once students enter college, and even then they are not required. Our society does not value art or art making, but it does acknowledge that art is worthwhile and important. In Eilean Hooper-Greenhill’s article Education, communication and interpretation, she explains that even those who do not frequent museums are comforted by the existence of museums (7, 1998). 

As Dana was saying...

A century ago (I know I keep saying this, but I can’t get over it) Dana wrote that, “[The New Museum] is not friendly to the ‘museum’ atmosphere, which is depressing and numbing to the sensitive visitor in direct ratio to the self-conscious grandeur and refinement of its architectural container (25, 1917).” Throughout his essay on the New Museum, Dana describes the concept by both what it is, and what it is not. Here, he provides an inspired system of measurement for the traditional museum experience. He goes on to say that not every museum will create the same experience, but that in the world of the New Museum, that is a desirable state because “the world needs variety more than it needs standards (32, 1917).”

While it is exciting for me to see that someone else with far more experience and prestige has thought the same thoughts that I have been grappling with for so long, it is also frustrating. In so much time there has been so little change, especially in the art museum which Dana describes even then as being the epitome of the traditional museum experience (26, 1917).

So what?

As discussed in Elee’s article Rules for the (R)evolution of Museums, museums are beginning to understand their role as societal educators, “...but there is still much to be done to work against the entrenched cultural hegemony that museums often represent (23, 2010).” Given the state of art education in our society, it is all the more important that art museums recognize their own role in the perpetuation of the perception that museums are dull mausoleums of culture. Art museums have the tools to become houses of art education, filling in the gapping voids left by public education, but they must first acknowledge that this is their responsibility.  

Dana calls for a whole new museums that is completely separate from the art museums or a traditional gallery, but I think that Dana’s ideas could be applied to a new art museum that uses its existing collection to recreate the entire museum experience.