Hi Eugene et al.:

Eugene, thank you for sending the link to this intriguing article.  (I am
eager to read other reactions.)

While I see the great benefits of juxtaposing artwork of different styles by
different artists (and am in favor of it), I hesitate at the suggestion that
anyone celebrate the stripping away of educational devices.  Perhaps some
museums go overboard - bombarding the visitor with signage, filled with
historical documentation and/or interpretive flair.

This exhibition will make the Hirschhorn, to some visitors, just a building
filled with objects of little (or no) significance.  Consider the confounded
looks from visitors to art museums when there is appropriate signage . . . so
how much more confused will visiors be?  Art museums depend upon the "buy-in"
of significance - whether it's the historical significance of the producer or
the historical significance of the object (method, style, subject, etc.).

The writers asks just how much information does the artwork require to capture
a viewer's interest.  Interest is a good start . . . but is the point of an
art museum just to be a place to hang artwork?  Don't art museums have the
responsibility to present information for those who want information?  (After
all, if one doesn't want to, one doesn't have to read labels and wall signs.)
If visitors are (as the writer, Eric Gibson, suggests) to learn how to look at
art, shouldn't the museum staff ought to be there to educate those who want to
be educated?  (Refer to the quotation in my signature at the end of this
message.)

One more point: The writer describes the Hirschhorn's effort as the
"abdication of curatorial guidance."  But there is curatorial guidance:

(1) the decision to NOT include didactic signage or identifying labels; and,
(2) the decision of which wall the artwork will hang upon and which pedestals
sculpture will rest upon.

Anarchy would be the abdication of curatorial guidance -- if the Hirschhorn
invited visitors to move the artwork around, to place the artwork as they
please.

My two cents as a stunned art historian and worried art educator.

Sincerely,

Jay Heuman
Assistant Curator of Education
Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art
Utah State University (Logan)
tel. 435-797-0165
fax 435-797-3423
email [log in to unmask]
web www.artmuseum.usu.edu

Education costs money, but then so does ignorance.
Sir Claus Moser (b. 1922)

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