There seems to be little disagreement that exhibits should take their audience

into full account while preserving curatorial integrity, and Claudia Nicholson

states well the point that curators sometimes pay more attention to each other

than the public.  But when Claudia writes:

> ...It
> would seem that some curatorial staffs have gotten carried away with
> current scholarship while misunderstanding that historical understanding
> in the public lags by at least 15 years, and possibly as much as 50!  I am
> wondering if the defense that "this represents current historical scholar-
> ship" is adequate to the bill-paying public.

I must ask, what is the point of holding an exhibition that purposely ignores
one's own current scholarship?  Aren't museums in the business of presenting
ideas to the public--ideas which are often based on original research?  If the

results of curatorial research are not, in some form or at some level,
potentially meaningful and presentable to public society, I would worry about
the research itself.  If "the public" needs background on the last 50 years of

scholarship in a certain field in order to understand current research, then
curators simply have a bigger job!  I'm not saying that the results of every
piece of research should be turned into an exhibit, but to not do an
exhibition just because one thinks the public can't understand the subject,
saying one is being "sensitive to the audience"--I think instead we should be
working on better ways to present complex ideas to a wide range of people.


Jeff Kupperman
Atelier Aza, Tokyo
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