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March 20, 2007
Just what the public hates about museums - Exhibition Overkill
If I were in NYC any time soon I'd go to the Met to look at this exhibition: Incisive Images: Ivory and Boxwood Carvings, 1450-1800 (NY Times review here - pictures at both links). I love this stuff. I really, really love 14th and 15th century (slightly before this show) ivory plaques. But . . . this is probably a horrific experience, right up there with a long gallery full of Greek vases on shelves.
The key phrase in the Met's own description: "The exhibition of over 100 works . . . ."
Oh. My.
Over 100 small (let's face it, most of this stuff is SMALL) sculptures. In vitrines. In a gallery on the way to the cafeteria.
(Further: Well, you might not hate little stuff in vitrines, but think about this - what is the average height of a museum goer? Or, better yet, what good is it to know the average height of a museum goer if you differ from that curatorial dream figure. There is no such thing as ideal placement for little stuff in a glass case - some of us will have to bend over 100 times and others of us will have to strain 100 times. It's a recipe for uncomfortable viewing.)
One of the terrible problems of museums is that they by their very nature jam together too many examples of things that were meant to be seen alone. That's bad enough with paintings and life-size sculpture, but I find it killing for small, precious things that were meant to be lone objects of devotion or sole conversation pieces. The salt cellars won't be so bad - they were meant to be part of a welter of table goods (think of crowded Dutch table still-life paintings, like this Willem Claesz Heda).
Oh, well. I guess a curator's gotta do what a curator's gotta do - at least she got the stuff out of the storage rooms and onto display.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at March 20, 2007 6:18 AM