8/22/08: No connection with the past in museums

I’m going to get kind of artsy on you this week, but don’t worry. The punch line of my column is simple: Museums are weird places.

I say this not after watching "Night at the Museum" or seeing one of those Dada exhibits or considering Magritte’s claim that a picture of a pipe isn’t a pipe, but after attending a show opening for a brilliant young local artist, Sam McKinniss, at the New Britain Museum of American Art.

McKinniss’ paintings, all portraits, are individually impressive, but what most struck me as I left the gallery was their cumulative effect. McKinniss had said in his artist’s statement that he’d intended the subjects of these portraits to be missing the viewer’s gaze, to give the audience a sense of having lost a chance at connection. And that’s exactly how I felt.

The walls of the room in which the paintings are hung — like the walls of many of the rooms at the Museum of American Art — are white, drawing attention to the art rather than the architecture. We think of this as blank, as being without context. We think of white walls as space waiting to be filled and, as viewers, our eyes are drawn to the spots of color, shape or texture in paintings, sculptures or other media.

The blankness works perfectly for shows such as McKinniss’, designed by the artist in advance for a museum gallery. McKinniss knew when he began his work that these paintings would be hung in a room such as the one in which they now hang and was able to plan the number and type of paintings he completed accordingly, to create a certain effect.

But what about other museum displays, of three-dimensional or historical artifacts?

Looking at an emperor’s dish from ancient China or a portrait of an English nobleman on these blank walls is a different sort of experience.

When the emperor used his dishes, he probably didn’t consider them works of art; they were dishes, necessary and practical as well as beautiful. Imagine if someone asked to put your Tupperware on display. You’d probably look at them strangely and ask if they needed to sit down.

When the nobleman commissioned his portrait, he didn’t imagine it hanging in a room with other noblemen’s pictures. He imagined it hanging in his home, among his other possessions, proving what a powerful and influential society man he was. It was art, yes, but it had another purpose and context as well.

We take those things out of their context when we put them in museums. This is probably why museums are boring.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve been to plenty of museums over the years, most of the time willingly. Living in Washington, D.C. and Oxford, England, practically forces you to participate in cultural activities such as trips to the museum. I’ve seen and appreciated all kinds of art and historical displays.

But it’s hard to imagine, in a typical museum, what life was like for Chinese emperors or English noblemen — and isn’t that part of the point of putting these things on display? That we let our minds wander back into history, to learn the lessons of the past to connect and apply them to today?

The New Britain Museum of American Art is excellent at what it does, and I like looking at modern art in a modern context. But history requires a different touch — an actual one.

More on that next week.