Let the work do its work!

I have (finally) begun my internship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in their Lunder Conservation department – an amazing space!  To get to the Lunder Conservation Center one must go all the way up the main stairs to a gallery space which features large sculptures and beautiful stain glass windows (and also a café area – gasp!  How dare they!).  Then one must still climb two more flights of stairs and walk through the open storage ‘gallery’ of the Luce Foundation Center; there at the end of it all is the conservation department.  Instead of walls between it and the museum, the conservation center has glass windows; allowing visitors to watch conservation in action!

Anyway, back to that gallery space.  Tomorrow my museum foundations class is going to the Smithsonian American Art Museum; more specifically, to the Luce Foundation Center.  The website for the center boasts that around 3,500 works of art from their permanent collection are on display – hung wildly on the pegboards and shoved in behind the glass cases.  Yes, ok, having the ability to display three and a half thousand works of art on top of all the other exhibitions in the museum is fantastic.  Yet, did I mention that these works are part of the permanent collection?  Most are wonderful works of art.  Why were they marginalized to begin with?

Is it really necessary to call this space an “open art storage space?”  All of the works are identified for the viewer and if you thought that, refreshingly, the curator decided to let the art speak for itself, think again.  Positioned throughout the space are computers which have copious amounts of information about every work on display, biographies of the artists, audio interviews, images, and videos.  Also, on most of the walls of the gallery are prompts for audio guide tours.  Ok, ok, so, relegating the overwhelming amount of information to the optional audio guides and optional computer use is a big step.  It does partially allow for the visitor to mold their own experience and for the artwork to speak for itself.

Or does it?  Also peppered throughout the display cases are wall texts.  Some innocently ask questions like: “Why is this gap here?”  “What belongs in this space?”  My favorite question, nestled amongst paintings of solitary women suggestively asks: “Are all these women sad?”  Honestly?  Even in the “first visible art storage and study center in Washington, D.C.” (so says the website) museum visitors cannot escape curatorial prodding and hand-holding. 

Do not get me wrong; I really do believe that the Luce Center is a fantastic, innovative space.  It allows the visitor to feel that they are getting a backstage tour of the museum and it displays works which otherwise would be hidden away.  I just beg: get rid of the leading wall texts which plant the curator’s views into the visitor’s head.  Let the work do its work.