“The only way to understand art is to go to a museum and look at it,” French painter Renoir suggests. But once inside, this is easier said than done. What do you do when the label simply reads “Untitled, 1973”? How do you react to exhibitions dominated by white male artists? How to Visit an Art Museum is a pragmatic and imaginative handbook which shows you the sense and nonsense of museum etiquette. The original edition (2014) became a bestseller, inspiring thousands of readers worldwide to pursue a truly rewarding museum visit. This expanded edition offers newly added tips that let you tackle current challenges such as the male gaze, fossil museum sponsors, and the lack of diversity on gallery walls. Now more than ever, the art museum is a place to question what you see. Find out how you can use museum guards to your advantage. Learn how to relate to art from male artists who treated their muses as scum. Explore how kids are able to offer you glimpses of the world that’s hidden behind an artwork. How to Visit an Art Museum shows you how a little courage and creativity can make your museum visit truly worthwhile and truthful. Because, ultimately, the art museum is what you make it.
Johan Idema is director of the ArtPublic Foundation and a passionate promoter of innovation in the art world.
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“ In a witty and intelligent way, Idema invents all possible ideas that could make museumgoers’ experience fuller.” —Books on Art
Copyright © 2014, 2024 Johan Idema Concept and text: Johan Idema (www.johanidema.net) Editing: Steffie Verstappen (Original Edition), John Loughlin (The Expanded Edition) Proofreading: Sarina Ruiter-Bouwhuis (Original Edition) Design Original Edition: Vandejong, Judith van Werkhoven Redesign The Expanded Edition: Studio Spass This publication has been made possible by the support of the De Gijselaar-Hintzenfonds. BIS Publishers Timorplein 46 1094 CC Amsterdam The Netherlands T +31 (0)20 515 02 30 bis@bispublishers.nl www.bispublishers.nl ISBN 978 90 636 9727 3 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owners. Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Any errors or omissions brought to the publisher’s attention will be corrected in subsequent editions.
Johan Idema
HOW TO VISIT AN ART MUSEUM The expanded edition
“ Idema challenges us to shape our own view, rather than to necessarily agree with him. After all, sparking the right questions is much more inspiring than providing clear-cut answers.” —Wim Pijbes, former General Director Rijksmuseum
“ This book […] acts as the strong hands of a massage, working out the kinks that have the potential to inhibit museum visitors from having fulfilling art viewing experiences.” —Sarah Ann on Goodreads
“ Practical tips for getting more out of your museum visit and, between the lines, an exhortation for museums themselves to be more creative.” —Jan Paul de Bondt, VPRO
“ Interesting, thought-provoking. I’m going to use some of the author’s suggestions next time I visit an art museum.” —Theresa on Goodreads
“ A booklet that fits in perfectly with these times. Like no other, Idema knows how to capture the spirit of the times in this work and ensures that we are handed tools at lightning speed to add value to our next exhibition visit.” —Yves Joris, TZUM
“ A wake-up call for curators and museum directors.” —Lorianne van Gelder, Parool
“ Not only do museums have to do their best, so do visitors.” —Rutger Pontzen, Volkskrant
“ A light-hearted guide aimed towards the bemused museumgoer…. The book is practical as well as fun-spirited.” —Katherine Oktober Matthews, GUP Magazine
“ In a witty and intelligent way Idema invents all possible ideas that could make museumgoers’ experience fuller.” —Books on Art
THE MOMENT WE STAND EYE TO EYE WITH AN ARTWORK, WE EXPECT SOMETHIN TO HAPPEN.
ONCE INSIDE THE ALLERY, YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN. THE MUSEUM ASSUMES THAT THE ACT OF VIEWIN ART IS SELF-EXPLANATORY.
AS WE ARE ENTERIN A POST-PATRIARCHAL ERA, MANY FEEL IT’S TIME TO WRITE WOMEN BACK INTO THE HISTORY OF ART.
CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 FOR OTTEN FEMALES writing women back into the story of art
2 THE EYES OF THE MUSEUM
how to use the guard’s insight to your advantage
3 WALK SLOWLY,
BUT KEEP WALKIN
how to combat an achy pair of museum legs
4 PAINTIN S WITHOUT PEOPLE IN IT
on understanding landscapes
5 TOXIC ART
what to do with questionable male artists
13 THE MALE AZE
museums showing objectified women
14 CHEWIN UM STICKIN ON THE INSIDE OF YOUR BRAIN
the importance of finding your own masterpiece
15 THE PERFECT ANTIDOTES
why your kid is an excellent guide
16 REALITY FUNCTIONS AS MY FIELD OF ACTION how to deal with artspeak
17 THE SOUL OF A MUSEUM
on the added value of collecting staff picks
18 WHOSE ART?
why to pay attention to ownership
6 WHEN ART OCCURS
19 THE UNDIS UISED VIEW OF THE HUMAN BODY
7 SHOCK ME IF YOU CAN
20 UNTITLED #3, 1973
8 WHERE ART ENDS AND THE WORLD BE INS
21 ART IS A CONVERSATION
on the value of watching people look
how to process provocative art
on frames and the theatrics of art
9 PART OF THE ART
performing the art museum
10 THE BEAUTY AND THE BULLSHIT
how to separate good from bad art
how to deal with nudity in the museum
getting over minimalist art titles
reframing what the museum restaurant is about
22 NOT IN THE WAY
on including others in the picture
23 NO PHOTOS!
how taking pictures enhances your museum experience
11 FRIENDS YOU HAVEN’T YET MET
24 NOT JUST A RAVEYARD FOR ART
12 BUT, IS IT ART?
25 SELFIES AVANT LA LETTRE
on the beauty of small talk with strangers
managing your expectations of art
expanding your perception of what an art museum has to offer
how to appreciate portraiture
CONTENTS 26 OIL, CI ARETTES AND PILLS
40 WHAT BRIN S YOU HERE?
27 ASK ME ABOUT THE ART
41 ALSO AVAILABLE AS A POSTCARD
28 SLOW ME THE WAY
42 PAIRIN PARKER WITH POLLOCK
why you should check sponsor logos
on the added value of encountering a gallery guide
a plea for taking a longer look
29 HE FELT SMOOTH AND FIRM
why you should get your hands on art
30 THE CUBA FOLDIN FLOWER CHAIR
how sitting down will help you to see more
31 THE SENSITIVE APPROACH
why art is more than a head puzzle
32 YOUR LABELS MAKE ME FEEL STUPID
how to put up with label texts
33
ANY QUESTIONS?
34
OPEN WELLS OF FEELIN
35
WHO’S ON THE WALL?
how to guide your tour guide towards delivering value
on the perks of reading the guest book
towards a more inclusive art history
36 BRIN IN THE OUTSIDE IN
on the added value of observing the world from a museum window
37 PLEASE DISTURB THE ARTIST getting to know the (wo)man behind the work
38 A SKULL, APPLES AND A BOTTLE how to make sense of the still life
39 TOMBS FOR TROPHIES
how to visit a private art museum
on pinpointing your underlying motives
why to take the museum store more seriously
how coupling music and art enhances your art experience
READ MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR FROM THE SAME AUTHOR ACKNOWLED EMENTS INDEX
INTRODUCTION
STOP WANDERIN , START ACTIN The only way to understand art is to go to a museum and look at it, according to French painter Renoir. His suggestion gave birth to the idea of a book dedicated entirely to the act of visiting an art museum. The original edition of How to Visit an Art Museum (2014) became a bestseller, inspiring thousands of readers worldwide to pursue a rewarding museum visit. Since then, the world has changed and so has the art museum. This expanded edition of How to Visit an Art Museum offers newly added tips for a rewarding and truthful visit. The added advice lets you tackle new and current challenges that make the art museum an even more exciting, if not testing, place to spend time. How do you react to exhibitions dominated by white male artists? How to deal with art museums sponsored by the fossil and addiction industries? Now more than ever, the art museum is a place to question what you see.
About the white cube If it wasn’t for the white cube, this book wouldn’t have been written. That’s why it’s important for you to know a thing or two about it. When the white cube first appeared in the 1970s, it was meant to be a large, clean, neutral—and thus pure— white space. A place free of context. Inside the white cube, it would be just you and the artworks, nothing in between, alone together, in silence. But something went wrong: the white cube became an end in itself. The white cube gave museums and artists an excuse to focus on art for art’s sake. As a result, the white cube’s enclosure started to feel like isolation, its cleanliness like sterility, and art museums in general like laboratory-like spaces. More than merely being a space, the white cube came to represent a way of presenting art. And one that profoundly shapes your museum experience to this day.
INTRODUCTION Now, more than fifty years later, you might think things have changed. Just look at all the wonderful art museums that have been built or renovated since, museum professionals will say. And they are right: some white cubes now have windows, while others boast spectacular architecture. What remains, however, is the etiquette museums follow to “serve” us their artworks. While art has reinvented itself in many ways throughout the past half-century—growing more diverse, complex and absurd than ever before—museums continue to display art in the same monotonous, minimalistic manner. This prompted famous art collector Charles Saatchi to describe the white cube as “antiseptic” and “worryingly oldfashioned and clichéd.” And it’s even getting worse, as the white cube now seems to be regarded as the only way to present art. Drifting from artwork to artwork Too much purity harms the museum. Art needs to be connected to the real world in order to have meaning. “It’s not that art should be seen only in rutty bombedout environments,” art critic Jerry Saltz justly remarks, “but there are other ways, both in space and behavior.” Paradoxically, the serenity and strictness of most art museums hardly tolerate for them to explain or contextualize art. Clean walls and silence don’t allow for a proper story, conversation, performance, party, or any other approach that helps you to understand and appreciate art. Nevertheless, this may just be the kind of guidance that many of us need in order to feel more comfortable at the museum.
Most art professionals and aficionados have full faith in the white cube. They believe it encourages the best way to behave around art. There is, however, a much larger group of museumgoers that feels differently. They enter the museum with the hope or even expectation that they will have a worthwhile experience. Once inside, we see them drifting from artwork to artwork, spending an average of ten or perhaps twenty seconds with each object. Their faces reveal interest, but also weariness. Observe them a little longer and you will notice that many of them seem lost, overwhelmed, bewildered, or even bored. “Our encounters with art do not always go as well as they might,” philosopher Alain de Botton notes: “The way the establishment presents art to us doesn’t invite us to bring ourselves into contact with works.” You can take charge The museum functions as the prime location at which our ideas about art take shape. Why is it then that there are so many fabulous books on digesting art, but not a single one that informs you about how to use the museum in your best interest? Our encounters with art can be rewarding, even illuminating. But don’t be fooled. It’s a misconception that simply being in the museum, in the presence of great art and merely contem
INTRODUCTION
plating it means your art experience will be meaningful by definition. For that to happen, you’ll have to forge a personal connection with the art, by somehow understanding it or by being touched by it. For many of us that spark doesn’t ignite itself. While you would expect the museum to help you on your way, white cube protocol in fact often has the opposite effect: it prevents us from having a meaningful experience. The good news is that you can, to great degree, take charge and shape your museum visit yourself. Museums may have sound reasons to present art the way they do, but it’s up to you how you want to experience it. Art museums may look and feel like a sterile white space, but that doesn’t mean you should act accordingly. In order to make your visit worthwhile, you may actually be better off by following a different approach. That’s what this book is about: it offers new perspectives on the way you can behave around art to turn your museum visit into a meaningful memory. A little courage and creativity Whether first-timer or frequent visitor, this book offers fresh perspectives on the art museum. It shows you the sense and nonsense of museum etiquette. It lets you tackle the challenges the white cube poses by taking things into your own hands a little more. Because the typical museum behavior—“Walk slowly, but keep walking”, writer Gertrude Stein
suggests—is seldom the most rewarding. Find out how museum guards can be to your advantage. Learn the rule of thumb to distinguish good from bad art. Discover how kids offer you glimpses of the world hidden behind an artwork. Aiming for a satisfying stay requires you to sometimes leave the beaten track, taking care of things yourself or having a few sagacious insights at your disposal. This book shows you how with a little courage and creativity can you can find these new, engaging ways to connect with art and thus make your visit truly rewarding. How to Visit an Art Museum is meant to be a pragmatic and imaginative handbook that caters to the curious and decisive museum visitor. Hopefully, it inspires you to make the art museum a more lively and—especially—more rewarding place. To truly make this happen, do not only read this book but, rather, to start acting according to its insights. Because ultimately, the art museum is what you make it.
INTRODUCTION
EXPANDED THE EDITION A changing zeitgeist A warming climate, the meteoric rise of artificial intelligence, democracies under pressure, shifting powers with regards to male-female relations.... Rapidly the world is becoming an even more exciting, if not testing, place to spend time. The same goes for the art museum. Here too, as a museum visitor, you irrevocably run into many of today’s challenges. Naturally, you might say. After all, don’t artists express in their work precisely what is happening around them? Doesn’t their work always reflect the time in which it was created? Of course it does, but there is more to it. Not only art, but also artists themselves—their behavior—and how we respond to them, make our museum visits more complicated by revealing a changing zeitgeist. Just consider how the behavior of some male artists—how they treat their muses (see tip #5)—now increasingly determines how their work is viewed, received, or even canceled.
The same goes for the museum as a public institution. Their decisions regarding, for instance, diversity, and representation are followed with increasing critical attention. Particularly in the galleries, where curators present their choices for which artists (in terms of race, gender, ideas) are shown and who is not. Also under a magnifying glass is the museum as a business. What financial interests hide behind the art? Should museums take money from the fossil industry? Increasingly, museums are targets of playful, as well as less playful, protests involving glue, (fake) blood, and (fake) oil.
1
WRITIN WOMEN BACK INTO THE STORY OF ART
FOR OTTEN FEMALES Rembrandt, Leonardo, Vincent, Pablo, Salvador, Andy, Jeff—art history sometimes seems like a men-only party. Of the artists that museums show us, as much as 90% are men. Not that there is anything wrong with male artists themselves, just that they are simply so predominant. Who has ever heard of the artists Mira Schendel or Janet Sobel? Or Suzanna Valadón? Many of them are either forgotten or their recognition lags decades behind that of their male counterparts. As we are entering a post-patriarchal era, many feel it’s time to write women back into the story of art. After all, the importance of an artist’s work directly correlates with how much of their story is known. The absence of women from museum walls was already duly noted in the seventies. But museums turn out to be slow adapters. Today, female artists are still grossly underrepresented in galleries. This is where you, the museum visitor, come in. Alone or with a few likeminded souls, you have the unsuspected power to stir attention and to speed things up.
What can you do, next time you find yourself in a museum that (almost) only promotes male creativity? Start with generating awareness: discuss your observations—with fellow visitors, on social media, and with the museum. Ask the guards and staff what they think of the absence of women artists. They are the eyes of the museum and will report questions and concerns expressed by visitors. Do you feel the urgency to do more? Then take your pick from the many options for creative protest. Wear a statement shirt (“Desperately looking for female artists”). Place sticky notes next to artworks (“→ Another male artist”). Hand out statement postcards (“Where are the women?”). Or—this is allowed— bring a sign (“No female artists?”). It may require some courage, but it’s nothing you can get into trouble for. Don’t underestimate the impact you can have in the museum gallery, where the quietude and an attentive audience provide an ideal condition for an effective protest. This is a place where you will be heard.