On Monday I was in the print/archive room of Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts (the 4th largest museum in the country), looking over some of the greatest photographs ever taken (there was work by Avedon, Maplethorpe, Man Ray, Irving Penn, etc); yet none of them were on public display. To me that seemed like a terrible waste of great artwork, but unfortunately that’s just the way museums are forced to operate. So it was to my great surprise when I came across a recent New York Magazine article that addresses this very topic and offers some very refreshing ideas on art curation and the function of museums in general. Come on MFAh, get creative!
When the purse strings tighten up at museums, the institutions usually cut back and cancel shows. That’s exactly the wrong reaction. In fact, now is a good time for them to loosen up—a chance to breathe and experiment a little—and go for the juicy solution lurking in their own basements.
Almost all institutions own a lot more art than they can ever show, much of it revealing for its timeliness, genius, or sheer weirdness. If Charles Ray’s pint-sized naked nuclear family, owned by the Museum of Modern Art, were placed in the museum’s atrium, viewers might dash up to the permanent collection wondering where such a strange thing comes from. It would cast a whole different light on the collection and the museum.
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The other solution for MoMA, as well as other museums in similar situations, is to have more artists curating more exhibitions from museum storage. Not only would this save money; all sorts of unexpected objects, ideas, and narratives would pop out. To its credit, since 1989 MoMA has had just such an “Artist’s Choice” series in place. Nearly all the shows in this series have been outstanding.
Read the rest of the article HERE.
