The Care and Keeping of the Art
Look no further than a kindergarten class during show and tell and you can easily come to the conclusion that we humans like to show off our stuff. There is something quite satisfying about displaying objects that provoke curiosity and wonder and perhaps even a bit of envy and awe. People have been doing it for years, but over the ages the access to these collections has dramatically changed.
Today it is easy for almost anyone to view images of works of art. Google Arts and Culture is a wonderful way to peruse the art of the ages online from the comfort of your home. So are the social media and web pages of artists and galleries and museums. And then, of course, to see the works of art in person, a trip to the museum is easily available to most. Back in the days of the Renaissance when interest in art was expanding it was much more difficult for the general population to engage with art. Art patrons such as Lorenzo de Medici are credited with giving the Italian Renaissance the fertile soil to be cultivated yet if you weren’t invited to his palace or if you didn’t live in Florence you never really saw the art he collected.
The social movements of European culture such as Enlightenment, Nationalism and Revolution brought about changes in who was able to access art. Museums solely dedicated to the display of art started popping up in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Capitoline (Rome, 1734), the Louvre (Paris, 1793), and the Alte Pinakothek (Munich, 1836) were some of the first. In the latter half of the 19th century as the United States came into its own, art museums soon became abundant as the American population’s interest in art, especially Western European art, grew.
When we look at paintings and drawings of the curiosity cabinets and the Parisian salons of the 17th and 18th centuries, we notice that often every inch of wall space is dedicated to displaying the collection housed within. The aesthetic of these antecedents to today’s public art museums often contrast with the more intentional placement of art in museum galleries today. The display of unrelated objects of fascination eventually were thematically set forth leading to exhibitions and museums that focused solely on art. The white cube approach to gallery hanging, perfected in the 1930s by Afred H Barr, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, influenced museums around the world to create galleries with bare spaces between works of art to make for a more pure connection between single works of art and the viewer.
Those tasked with making the decisions about what will be placed and how it will be displayed came to be known as curators. Before we, as docents, create tours to help the public engage in our collection, the curators decide what works of art are even being made available to us. A curator takes care of the art, makes decisions about the art, and serves as the middleman between the artist and the viewer. An eye for art, a grasp of historical context, an understanding of varied cultures, and an ability to discern the course of the future are all the superpowers a curator spends their career fine-tuning.
A bit of a numbers game illustrates the necessity for and responsibility of curators in the world of art museums. The Toledo Museum of Art owns over 30,000 works of art. Let that sink in the next time you wander the galleries. Truly, you are looking at the tip of the iceberg and it’s only TMA’s iceberg. Consider then that there are approx 35,000 art museums in the United States alone and 95,000 in the world. And then there are the art galleries and the art studios, the private homes and even the dark basements and attics. The world has become one big storage facility for the art of the ages.
Today, more than ever we are made aware of the responsibility the curator has to represent the world of art to the rest of us. So much art, so little space. Who gets represented? Who remains in storage? Whose art never even comes close to being seen? A look at the website of the Association of Art Museum Curators indicates that curation is evolving over time and meeting the challenges set forth by today’s society. The first article listed on their resources page is about DEAI, (Diversity, Equity, Access and Inclusivity), practices.
Curation is becoming a buzz word in today’s culture. Anyone who has an instagram account and an interest in collecting is calling themselves a curator and displaying their wares. Yet the curators who hold the degrees, have had the specialized training and are committed to research of the past and an eye on the future will continue to design and define our relationship with art and art museums in the years to come.
Ferrante Imperato, Dell'Historia Naturale (1599), the earliest illustration of a natural history cabinet
Candidates for Admission to the Paris Salon, late 19th–early 20th century,
Felicien Myrbach-Rheinfeld Austrian
François Joseph Heim, “Charles V Distributing Awards to the Artists at the Close of the Salon of 1827,” 1824
A.R. Penck paintings 1974–1990, 9 March – 14 April 2022, White Cube Mason's Yard