Monday, February 25, 2008
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Online Museums
Art museums can be mind-expanding or sleep-inducing, depending on how you approach
them. It is a mistake to enter a museum with the belief that you should like everything you see–or even that you should see everything that is there. Without selective viewing, the visitor to a large museum is likely to come down with a severe case of museum exhaustion. There is a way to enjoy an art museum without experiencing overload. If you were to go to a new restaurant and try to sample everything on the menu, you would probably get sick. In both restaurants and museums, selection is the key to a positive experience.It makes sense to approach an art museum the way a seasoned traveler approaches a city for a first visit: Find out what there is to see. In the museum,find out about the schedule of special shows, then see those exhibitions and outstanding works that interest you. Don’t stay too long in a museum. Take breaks. Perhaps there is a garden or cafe in which you can pause for a rest. The quality of your experience is not measured by the amount of time you spend in the galleries or how many works you see. The most rewarding experiences can come from finding something that “speaks” to you, then enjoying it in leisurely contemplation. Try these exercises when visiting your favorite museum:
1. In a room containing several works, decide which one you would save if the building were on fire.Why would you choose the work that you did? Is it because of the story the work tells? Its importance to the history of art? Its innovative composition? Its intense personal expression? Its rarity? The high skill level of its creator? Some other reason? Visit several areas of the museum and ask the same question. If you note a common denominator among your choices, this is valuable information about how your personal values interact with art works.
2. If you are visiting the museum with other people, have each person choose one work to save and debate among yourselves to try to arrive at a consensus. This is not such a far-fetched exercise: Museum staff members often go to artauctions with enough funds to acquire only one work from among those on view.
3. Find two works from different periods that take up the same general subject. Compare how each creator has treated it. Perhaps they are poles apart: painting/sculpture, ancient/modern, monochromatic/colorful, balanced/off-balance compositions, nearby/far-off cultures. If so, what do the works have in common? If the works are relatively similar (say, Western paintings from different periods), consider how each artist may have had different thoughts about the subject and chosen different color schemes, compositional styles, or types of human figures.
4. Go through several rooms of the museum and decide which work you like the least. What is there about that work that puts you off so much? If you are with other people, decide with them which work is the worst on view, and figure out why. Try to go beyond labels such as "boring" or "offensive" or "upsetting" or "ugly". What characteristics of the work cause you to label it so? What would it take to "improve" the work?
Visit the following museum websites to familiarize yourself with their collections, exhibitions, and other helpful resources:
United States
Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, NY
http://www.metmuseum.org
Museum of Modern Art
New York, NY
http://www.moma.org
Guggenheim Museum
New York, NY
Las Vegas, NV
http://www.guggenheim.org
Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, IL
http://www.artic.edu/aic
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Philadelphia, PA
http://www.philamuseum.org
National Gallery of Art
Washington, DC
http://www.nga.gov
International
The Louvre Museum
Paris, France
http://www.louvre.fr
The Prado Museum
Madrid, Spain
http://museoprado.mcu.es
Hermitage Museum
St. Petersburg, Russia
http://www.hermitagemuseum.org
Guggenheim Museum
Bilbao, Spain
Venice, Italy
Berlin, Germany
http://www.guggenheim.org
them. It is a mistake to enter a museum with the belief that you should like everything you see–or even that you should see everything that is there. Without selective viewing, the visitor to a large museum is likely to come down with a severe case of museum exhaustion. There is a way to enjoy an art museum without experiencing overload. If you were to go to a new restaurant and try to sample everything on the menu, you would probably get sick. In both restaurants and museums, selection is the key to a positive experience.It makes sense to approach an art museum the way a seasoned traveler approaches a city for a first visit: Find out what there is to see. In the museum,find out about the schedule of special shows, then see those exhibitions and outstanding works that interest you. Don’t stay too long in a museum. Take breaks. Perhaps there is a garden or cafe in which you can pause for a rest. The quality of your experience is not measured by the amount of time you spend in the galleries or how many works you see. The most rewarding experiences can come from finding something that “speaks” to you, then enjoying it in leisurely contemplation. Try these exercises when visiting your favorite museum:
1. In a room containing several works, decide which one you would save if the building were on fire.Why would you choose the work that you did? Is it because of the story the work tells? Its importance to the history of art? Its innovative composition? Its intense personal expression? Its rarity? The high skill level of its creator? Some other reason? Visit several areas of the museum and ask the same question. If you note a common denominator among your choices, this is valuable information about how your personal values interact with art works.
2. If you are visiting the museum with other people, have each person choose one work to save and debate among yourselves to try to arrive at a consensus. This is not such a far-fetched exercise: Museum staff members often go to artauctions with enough funds to acquire only one work from among those on view.
3. Find two works from different periods that take up the same general subject. Compare how each creator has treated it. Perhaps they are poles apart: painting/sculpture, ancient/modern, monochromatic/colorful, balanced/off-balance compositions, nearby/far-off cultures. If so, what do the works have in common? If the works are relatively similar (say, Western paintings from different periods), consider how each artist may have had different thoughts about the subject and chosen different color schemes, compositional styles, or types of human figures.
4. Go through several rooms of the museum and decide which work you like the least. What is there about that work that puts you off so much? If you are with other people, decide with them which work is the worst on view, and figure out why. Try to go beyond labels such as "boring" or "offensive" or "upsetting" or "ugly". What characteristics of the work cause you to label it so? What would it take to "improve" the work?
Visit the following museum websites to familiarize yourself with their collections, exhibitions, and other helpful resources:
United States
Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, NY
http://www.metmuseum.org
Museum of Modern Art
New York, NY
http://www.moma.org
Guggenheim Museum
New York, NY
Las Vegas, NV
http://www.guggenheim.org
Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, IL
http://www.artic.edu/aic
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Philadelphia, PA
http://www.philamuseum.org
National Gallery of Art
Washington, DC
http://www.nga.gov
International
The Louvre Museum
Paris, France
http://www.louvre.fr
The Prado Museum
Madrid, Spain
http://museoprado.mcu.es
Hermitage Museum
St. Petersburg, Russia
http://www.hermitagemuseum.org
Guggenheim Museum
Bilbao, Spain
Venice, Italy
Berlin, Germany
http://www.guggenheim.org
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