"Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art." -Andy Warhol

Currently, there are two Andy Warhol exhibitions being put on by the Smithsonian, one at the National Gallery and one at the Hirshorn. I saw both of these shows in the same day and probably the most memorable thing about both of them was the explosion of Andy Warhol merchandise spewing from the gift shops.

At the Hirshorn, a display was set up leading into the gift shop offering/pushing merchandise that was endorsed by the curator, resting under a sign reading, "Curator's Pick!" Things were even more eerily consumption-focused at the National Gallery. Besides having to walk through three gift shops (all overflowing with Warhol memorabilia) on the way to see his work, there was a case placed at the end of the exhibit full of notebooks, coffee mugs, etc, all carefully arranged and displayed in a softly lit case serving to remind visitors of what they could buy on their way out (in case they forgot about the three stores or what was for sale in them). At first I thought, "Oh, here's more of the exhibit," which I think might have been the museum's creepy intention. They used the integrity of the gallery space and the significance of a glass case to pimp out Andy Warhol stuff. And the merchandise for sale was not representative of the work of Warhol's that was exhibited. So if I had bought said merchandise, it would not technically be a souvenir of the experience. Instead, it would mark participation in commodifying the art and branding the artist. 

I suppose this product pushing especially stood out to me because Andy Warhol is obsessed with issues of commodification and branding in his work (especially in the work displayed). In fact, Warhol himself said, "When you think about it, department stores are kind of like museums." I'm pretty sure selling Andy Warhol tote bags was not a creative decision that extended from the exhibition or from Andy Warhol, but the National Gallery could have played with that idea a little. 

But anyway, how does this commercialism affect museum audiences?  To quote Carol Duncan, "The ever greater and more visible amounts of museum space given over to commerce has the effect of eroding the museum's special status as a commerce-free zone." And I agree with Duncan. Museums "must be expected to observe the boundary between 'high' and 'popular' culture." Otherwise, we would lose faith in museums as educational and cultural protectors and transmitters. We would be scrutinizing the motives of museums and questioning the messages they transmit the same way we do with corporations. 

And related to last week's post, here is a hilarious bit from The Onion that perfectly sums up my points. 

Never Forget

Recently, the National Museum of American History exhibited its 9/11 collection to commemorate the ten year anniversary of the terrorist attacks. This led me to research how the country is remembering, teaching,  and honoring the attacks, the victims, the victims' families and how these groups intersect. In my research I stumbled upon the mission of the museum on the World Trade Center site:

"THE MISSION of the Memorial Museum, located at the World Trade Center site, is to bear solemn witness to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993. The Museum honors the nearly 3,000 victims of these attacks and all those who risked their lives to save others. It further recognizes the thousands who survived and all who demonstrated extraordinary compassion in the aftermath. Demonstrating the consequences of terrorism on individual lives and its impact on communities at the local, national, and international levels, the Museum attests to the triumph of human dignity over human depravity and affirms an unwavering commitment to the fundamental value of human life."

I found the wording to be dogmatic and dramatic (especially the part which says, "the Museum attests to the triumph of human dignity over human depravity"), and evoked images of red state bumper stickers (like, "NEVER FORGET.")

Additionally, the first two goals are to "bear solemn witness" and to "honor the nearly 3000 victims." These don't seem to mesh with Paul M. Rea's idea of the function of the museum. In "What are Museums For?" he writes that the function of museums is "the acquisition and preservation of objects, the advancement of knowledge by the study of objects, and the diffusion of knowledge for the enrichment of the life of the people."

In other words, museums should educate and elucidate, which the Memorial Museum will probably do in some capacity by acting as preservers of a historically significant event. But overall, it seems like an emotional response is what they are going for. Are the objects in this museum artifacts or relics? It's hard to tell.

Another museum which dually serves a memorial is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Their mission reads:

"The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is America’s national institution for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history, and serves as this country’s memorial to the millions of people murdered during the Holocaust."

While it also serves as a place of remembrance, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum prioritizes the dissemination of information, which is what a museum should do. 


Wether they also entertain, celebrate, or honor, the contract museums have with their audiences dictates that their purpose is to educate, and if museums are not doing this, they are underserving their audiences. 

Revision of My Prejudices

Well, it is convenient that as an Art and Museum Studies major, there is a lot of overlap of issues in the readings and in class discussion, because this week I came across the most appropriate article for this blog discussion. Actually, I felt like it applied more to this blog than to the assignments of the class it was assigned for. I'm speaking of "Museums in the Age of Deconstruction" by Michael Ames.

The portion of Ames' article which I was most interested in is titled "The Politics of Public Taste: Pornography and Blasphemy" and it discusses a time when United States Congress representatives and senators threatened to cut the budget of the National Endowment of the Arts for financing a Robert Maplethorpe exhibition and an Andres Serrano exhibition. (He also gives the details of a similar situation in Canada, but I'll skip that.) Ames goes on to ask the following questions: "What is art, who is it for, who pays for it, who calls the tune?"

When I think of the Hide/Seek exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, I think, "Obviously the art at the National Portrait Gallery is for The Nation, not specifically the Catholic League which called for the removal of part of the show. As I go further in Ames' article, I feel more and more impassioned about this issue. Especially when he drops this beautiful John Updike quote (No, really, John Updike. As in, the author of The Witches of Eastwick. Apparently he writes about art, too.):

"It is perhaps the nature of modern art to be offensive. It wishes to astonish us and invites a revision of our prejudices. If we are not willing to risk giving offense, we have no claim to the title of artists, and if we are not willing to face the possibility of being ourselves revised, offend and changed by a work of art, we should leave the book unopened, the picture unveiwed, and the symphony unheard." 

So just as I'm attaining this high of poetic righteousness a la John Updike, Ames plays devil's advocate. I mean, I understand the pressures that were put on the director of the Portrait Gallery. The risk of cut funds, the pressure to serve the widest of audiences.... but Ames brings new light to the issue. He asks if we should set limits out of respect for the community standards of the for sensitivities of others. He points out that that lunatic Jesse Helms is probably not the only person with these sensitivities. Ames questions, "Is art now to be considered such an absolute value that no other standard- no standard of taste, no social or moral standard- is to be allowed to play a role in determining what sort of art is appropriate for the government to support?"

It is the way Ames speaks of art as being an absolute value that really gets me thinking. I guess the idea of the government censoring anything is a frightening one because it seems like it opens the door to even more control over what we Americans are exposed (or not exposed) to. But Ames' does raise some very important questions. I'm still very much in favor of the first amendment and I'm still upset that political pressure resulted in the removal of part of David Wojnarowicz's work, but I am thinking more carefully about the breadth of the audience and the status of art as an "absolute value."

What duties do museums have to their audiences?

In a very broad sense, the issue I have chosen to use this blog to focus on is: the social contract that museums have with the public. That is, I want to explore the relationships museums have with their patrons and how these relationships have evolved over time. I'm interested in the implications of being a government-funded institution and the responsibilities museums have to their audiences.

My interest in this topic was piqued by John Cotton Dana's article, "The Gloom of the Museum." Dana's  discussion of the atmosphere and location of museums, the arrangement of objects within, the monetary worth and rarity of a museum artifacts, and the duties museums have to their audiences have caused me to reassess some of the experiences I have had in museums.

I'm still considering subsets of this broad topic, but since my college thesis research was centered heavily around Nazi Germany's exhibition of entartete Kunst, or "degenerate art,"  "Cultural Gatekeeping" seems like a good place to begin.  The issues surrounding the "Hide/Seek" exhibit by David Wojnarowicz come to mind immediately, but I plan on exploring more instances of censorship and propagana within our cultural institutions.

'Till then.