Smoke and Mirrors: Museum Display and Historical Accuracy

The museum is a sacred space: art lovers near and far traverse to the city capitals here, there and everywhere for entry into the latest exhibition. We purchase tickets; we process, ambulate, and circumambulate thoughtfully circumscribed galleries; we stop and gather to worship before the altarpieces of great masters of Renaissance and modern ages, if only for a brief moment.  In the gift shop, we collect our books, t-shirts, postcards – any token of our own little (sometimes arduous) pilgrimage.  However, while these museums may look and feel like modern cathedrals to art (the gothic Victoria and Albert and the colossally classical British Museum), many of the art pieces they house were not originally created for such spaces and instances of display.  This is particularly problematic when we find ourselves, as viewers, absorbing whatever visual or factual truth presented by the setting of a museum, which may or may not consider its original purpose or place of display. 

In this blog, Hannah (green) and I (Katherine-blue) will consider some of the ups and down of museum display: in some instances citing theory; in most, offering our own experiences, thoughts and questions on art works we’ve loved, exhibits we’ve hated, and gallery lay-outs we’ve found inspiring and why. 

Labels

Labelling and signage is a tricky one. Obviously, as a viewer, we want to know all about the piece in front of us. But we don’t want the description to detract from the art, encouraging us to stand too close amongst a huddle of other people all struggling to read the too-small grey-on-grey print that never seems to give quite the right amount of detail. Indeed sometimes it is possible that labels and guides don’t even give the right detail. Following a departmental seminar by Daniel Wallace Maze earlier on this week, we have become very aware of the fact that museums rarely allow for any degree of uncertainty when it comes to the attribution of a work. Perhaps this is a response to public demand for concrete knowledge, something that is understandable but perhaps not entirely useful in terms of encouraging productive engagement and research.  As art historians, chances are we will often know something about the images and objects we seek out – but what of those we don’t? Audioguides offer a solution, as do large-print guides, catalogues and swatting up beforehand on selected pieces that you intend to view on the day, or making notes to follow up afterwards. Again, none of these are foolproof but certainly encourage a more active engagement with a work of art than simple viewing. That said, there is much to gain from soaking up the art and appreciating it from an aesthetic point of view or, indeed, viewing a piece actively and engaging with colour, material, form and content before worrying about the details of who and when and where. It doesn’t always have to be about academics and I fear that sometimes we get hung up (if you’ll pardon the pun) on the hang or the labels and stop enjoying the art. Striking this balance is a thorny issue and sadly, labelling choices are unlikely to please everyone. Perhaps this is why minimalism seems to be preferred for labels in general, leaving the viewer to fill in the gaps themselves. Some will find this frustrating, others rewarding, but perhaps it is worth remembering that any experience is what you make of it – absorb or study as you will, but most importantly - enjoy it!

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A label, unassuming and plain as it is, has power.  Often, its words determine how and why you look at a painting; sometimes many people look at a label even before considering the painting itself.  The clear-cut, didactic precision of a label gives you what seems to be the undisputed facts, leaving little room for the complexities and complications, interpretation and questioning inherent to the creation and existence of any art piece.  If a viewer does not bring any prior knowledge to the painting, words can simply explain away any curiosities that otherwise may entice him/her.  Read text – look at painting – okay, see what the text is saying, makes sense – moves on.  Off course, I am generalizing in the largest sense (and also not considering the necessary personal aesthetic choices each person makes when they choose to look at, linger, or question a painting)…but is there a better way to approach most labels? Can we, as Art Historians and Curators, work together not to just ‘tell-it-how-it-is’ at the most basic level and instead, offer places for questions; describe the art work so that it may lead people to ask ‘how-it-might-be/have-been’?  I often think back to the curiosity and excitement of the Natural Science museums of my youth in NYC, or even the child-like exuberance I feel still today in the Natural History Museum in London.  Without making galleries Kindergarten-playrooms, is there a way we can inspire even a little bit of that sense of wonder and youthful inspiration in the world of art?  I think engagement, like in the Museum of Modern Art in Middlesborough (see my blog about its curator and purpose here), is one answer, especially with contemporary art.  But what about something as simple as labels, whose sheer simplicity doesn’t lead us to question their authority…or even what they really say?  A lack of inquiry, of openness, of engagement even at that core intellectual level, can be dangerous in some circles – with art, I believe, it might threaten to cover over its beauty and historical pertinence with a layer of stale curatorial dust, separating us from that relatable fundamental act, and the essential joy, that comes with any creative activity.

Lighting

Unfortunately, one of the most memorable instances of ‘bad’ lighting was at the otherwise gorgeous Beyond Caravaggio exhibit at the National Gallery (see my blog here for further thoughts on this and other aspects of my visit).  One of the most beautiful aspects of Caravaggio-style Baroque painting is their incredible sense of contrast – brilliantly lit figures, all covered with shadow, emerging from near absolute darkness.  In their original state, they would have been displayed in the beautiful semi-darkness of a smoky, candle-lit chapel and the ‘emerging’ effect of the figures would have been even more profound.  The lighting of Caravaggio paintings I have seen in-situ in Rome, like stunning The Conversion on the Way to Damascus, is so perfect that the work has you feeling much like St. Paul must have at the hoof of that horse! 

To my disappointment, the lighting at the National Gallery seemed like exactly opposite: instead of the murky mystery of the dim Italian chapels, the exhibit paraded the paintings as if they were Vegas showgirls, lighting them with what seemed to be overly-strong, very direct, almost theatrical spots.  While it says a lot about Caravaggio’s brilliance that the profundity of his paintings still shone out against the disfiguring harshness of these lights, it leads us to deeper questions about what kind of lighting not only suits a painting, but how that suitable lighting leads to a greater historical understanding of the way that painting worked and was displayed originally.  Such inaccurate lighting, in this and other instances, does injustice to the true innovatory power of painters like Caravaggio, their significance in their own time, and an understanding of that time in ours.       

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Lighting is another issue fraught with problems. Katherine alludes, in the introduction to this piece, to the fact that works of art in museums are outside of their natural habitat. In both of our experiences, this is particularly the case with altar pieces. Altar pieces are regularly displayed in bright lighting, which could not be more different from the softly candlelit interiors of the churches for which they were originally intended. We found this to be starkly true of the Beyond Caravaggio exhibition at the National Gallery (we might be a little biased because we heart Caravaggio). However, in my recent visit to the main body of the National Gallery, I stumbled upon a room created to complement the Caravaggio exhibition and dedicated to two altarpieces by Juan Bautista Maíno: The Adoration of the Shepherds and The Adoration of the Kings. This were dimly lit and atmospheric, inspiring an atmosphere of hushed calm that one might expect to find in a church and entirely appropriate for two altarpieces. The contrast between the exhibition and this rooms could not be more pronounced and, rather than indicative of insensitivity on the part of curators, may actually demonstrate awareness of the demands of public display and the ways in which this interacts with a desire to be faithful to original context. Unfortunately, logistics mean that paintings can’t always be hung in small, intimate spaces, and different works require different lighting, so it may be that a one-size-fits all approach is the most appropriate.

 

Through the Looking Glass: Glass Casings and Audio Tours

One thing we’ve all been frustrated with in museums: glass casings over paintings and pieces. How many times have we tried to snap a shot of our favourite Simone Martini altarpiece but only see our own reflection in the glass rather than capture an image of the gorgeously revolted face of his Annunciation Mary? (That being said, I do largely disagree with excessive photo/selfie taking in a gallery – a thousand better images of the piece can not only usually be found on the museum website but [I’m sorry] Google Images [Blasphemy!].  As Art Historians, it is useful to get an angle or note a detail with a camera, but for the most part, a lot of picture-taking just creates crowd-traffic and disturbs the flow of the gallery).  There are, of course, the obvious benefits of a class encasement for preservation, safety and security - we certainly do not want another instance of that little boy being pushed by a crowd full on into the centre of a multi-million dollar painting (watch the video here if you missed it)! However, here are just a few questions that we might think about: how much does the glass change our viewing of the picture? It certainly is a divergence from the way the piece was originally displayed, especially in older pieces like a Renaissance altarpiece. How much does it change the actual colour or overall visual coherence of a painting when, intense lighting for instance, reflects off its surface and distorts the image? These and other questions concerning its actual state of purpose and original display that glass casing, while necessary and useful, brings up.

Making Materials Matter?

At Dulwich Picture Gallery back in October (see my blog ‘Old Masters, New Exhibits’ here), I really admired the Hans van de Welde exhibit’s choice of arrangement in a certain room where a central painting was surrounded by prepatory drawings, which differed in their medium, composition, and respective stage of finish and un-finish.  As someone who heralds drawings and designs in my own thesis, I thought it wonderfully productive for the viewer to actually envision the extraordinary artistic efforts that go into the process of the ‘final work’ of a painting.  Many if not most of the drawings were extraordinarily beautiful and worthy (and no doubt collected privately in some instances) for display in their own right, and yet, to see them collectively arguably adds a level of appreciation to art that a beautiful drawing or painting could not achieve alone.  The material handling of charcoal, the mastery of graphite, the first layerings-on of wash and watercolour and oil all become apparent as the ideas of artist shift, his composition is honed, his skill is executed in the timeless mastery of a craft that took incredible amounts of time and patience, love and frustration, years of blood, sweat and tears (yes, I could also be talking about graduate theses).  I think an increased understanding of the material and mental processes, shown hand-in-hand in this way – for not only a Renaissance man like van de Welde but for later more contemporary artists as well – can truly underscore the beauty of artworks which otherwise may be problematically worshipped as a single stroke of genius.  (I believe this ‘genius’ complex is problematic in two, maybe different, but significant ways for the way we not only view but make art today.  Not only does it herald the singularity of the individual as completely outside of his historical time and context, but it also has the potential to lead to a relative ‘laziness’ among viewers and aspiring artists who may think Rothko is a just a big block of colour, Duchamp is all about toilets, and Pollock just splattered paint and ‘I could do that’ when actually so much more theorizing, conceptualizing, drafting and process was involved.  Such a mentality, devoid of an appreciation of process and effort, material or mental, leads some art of today to absolute absurdity.)

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As Katherine says, the materiality of a work of art can have a huge impact upon the way we view it. Working on material culture, as I do, this is something very close to my heart. And in direct contrast to Katherine's comments regarding drawing and painting, what might be considered very ordinary and everyday objects can be elevated to works of fine art by the ways in which they are displayed. In the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum,  whole rooms full of ceramics are to be found. It cannot be denied that these objects are beautiful, ingeniously crafted and often highly entertaining in their original function (see, for example the eighteenth-century puzzle jug in the V&A).

Their display in great class cabinets that allow a 360^o view of these objects allows us to appreciate the master craftsmanship that went into their creation, to marvel and the sheer variety of tableware available to the early modern diner and to have a giggle at someone spilling wine all over themselves whilst attempting to drink from a puzzle jug. But this display leads us away from their original purpose. Yes, silver and ceramic plate was regularly on display in the home as a symbol of the householders' status and taste, but we mustn't forget the Renaissance emphasis on beauty and utility. These objects were made for use and display, and I wonder if preserving them for display as we do, with an emphasis on whole pieces and whole sets, glosses over their essentially ephemeral nature and practical purpose. That said, however, we do encounter the occasional reminder in a museum of the connection between use and beauty: the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford contains a recreation of a dining table laid for a meal that truly emphasises the impact and effect where these two purposes collide.

Layout

I must say, one of the most striking layouts I have ever seen was the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibit, Vogue 100.  Its reverse-chronological structure, at first confusing, presented its beautiful material ingeniously, connecting past to present in a way I have not seen in any gallery before.  Beginning with towers of magazine covers from a random variety of eras, it subsequently launched viewers into rooms starting with our current era, working back to the magazine’s founding in 1892.  (As a side note, some of the magazine photographs were gorgeously displayed, blown up in all their fabulous colour, and several strikingly abstract ones back-lit in darkened rooms.)  It wrapped it all up with one long room flanked on both sides by runway-like glass cases laying out the magazines themselves in the opposite direction – beginning bringing right back to the end in the present. Coming in with the mentality that ‘standards of beauty are so different than they have been in the past,’ I was surprised to see more patterns and connections than I expected, viewing ‘Womanhood’ in all its paradoxically changeful timelessness.  

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A layout that caused an awful lot of consternation was that of the Botticelli Reimagined exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Chaotic, shiny -black-walled modern art gave way to a grubby-looking nineteenth-century room followed by the stark, white-box-like, brightly lit Botticelli room. The reverse chronological order employed in this case seemed sadly to gloss over a lot of the nineteenth century art, focusing on Botticelli as the real 'goal' of the exhibition. This did seem odd, as the absence of both The Birth of Venus and Primavera made for a distinct lack of continuity, as it was these paintings that seem to have inspired so many of the artists that followed.

The first room, containing the twentieth-century work was an assault to the senses, incorporating audio-visual work and neon lighting with reflective walls and flooring and cramped conditions that meant that you could rarely step back and appreciate a work in its full glory. After this, the grey-carpeted nineteenth-century room felt like a bit of a dingy afterthought and the final room felt overly clinical and stark. I understand the concept that was being aimed at - capturing the mood of each era and moving back to the purity of Botticelli's original works. But sadly it fell so far short of this mark, it ended up feeling like three separate exhibitions and left me confused and alienated despite having been exposed to great artists such as Warhol and Rossetti and some interesting new pieces. In another layout, these may have been thrilling. I'm no student of museum theory, but this, more than anything else, really brought home the impact that layout and types of display can have on the way that we experience art.