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Museum Legs: Fatigue and Hope in the Face of Art
An irreverent, highly original look at our rocky relationship with museums and museums' rocky relationship with us. If you've ever considered going to an art museum and then thought, errr, I'll do something else . . . If you've ever arrived and left a little glazed and confused . . . If you've ever thought, I might read an eight-page article about art museums but not a whole book . . . Then this is your story. Museum Legs --taken from a term for art fatigue--starts with a Why do people get bored and tired in art museums and why does that matter? As Whitaker writes in this humorous and incisive collection of essays, museums matter for reasons that have less to do with art as we know it and more to do with business, politics, and the age-old question of how to live. Maybe the great age of museums will yet be a great age of creativity and hopeful possibility in everyday life.
264 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
June 25, 2016
Humorous and thought provoking reading on a topic that doesn't get much attention outside the professional art and museum worlds.
I found Whitaker's book by Googling "Why do museums make me tired and angry?" (Even though I am a bit of a culture vulture and love museums *in theory*.) I loved her title and subtitle. The answers I was seeking would have been about the physical experience of museums -- the dry air, the lighting that's somehow both too dim and too bright, etc. I also had a bone to pick with patrons who mechanically circuit the gallery looking at each work for a seemingly standardized amount of time before passive-aggressively crowding the person next to them to move on, as if the whole thing were an assembly line.
For the most part, Whitaker doesn't take up the physical conditions of museums that I was testily Googling about, except to critique situations in which a starchitect's costly new building overshadows the museum's content and mission. Her main concern, if I might generalize and offer my interpretation on it, is in the tension between art-as-creativity and art-as-reverential-0bject -- in other words, between the humanistic sense of play in artists and people in general, and the rather unfun guardian elites who have emerged from the art history discipline. Layered over this is the even more unfun "blockbuster exhibit" featuring high surcharges, crowds and thousands or millions of dollars in transportation costs for the art.
Some of the ideas Whitaker offered -- restated in my own words, so any mistakes are mine -- that I would like very much:
- More chairs in galleries. IMO, It's better to comfortably contemplate and even sketch a few excellent artworks than to inundate your brain with images that are difficult to absorb due to your aching feet and growing irritation at crowds. As if you were trying to become a human slide wheel.
- Less emphasis on those horrific audio tours that turn people into rude zombies. Ditto for tedious -- either overlong or dully written -- wall notes. Visual art is for LOOKING AT.
- Cheaper or even a return to free admission to the permanent collection so that people can "pop in" and get to know art. You shouldn't need to will yourself through 4 hours of museuming just to "get your money's worth."
- Longer hours on weekdays.
- More opportunities for the public to know art as a creator of it, not merely an appreciation of the culturally approved great works. At one point, she gave the example of a major urban museum that advertised (IIRC) about a dozen short classes, 2 studio art and 10 art history/appreciation. The studio classes sold out immediately and generated a waiting list, but not the art appreciation classes, indicating an unmet demand among laypeople to learn about making art.
This list just skims some of the more basic ideas. In the book, Whitaker covers the complexities of these and other more substantial ideas. It is very praiseworthy that her book offers suggestion, vision and hope, not only critique.
I had a few complaints that keep this at the level of "strong showing" and not "timeless work." First, it's a book of essays, not a thoroughly integrated argument, so there's a bit of catch-as-catch-can in the reading experience. Then, within the essays, Whitaker will juxtapose seemingly tangentially related sections of history, personal experience and journalism and allow the reader to notice what are supposed to be serendipitous connections; personally, I would have preferred the connections to be rendered more explicit through her generally excellent analytical skills. Finally, even though she seems to have a sincere desire to reach more people through museums, in more satisfying ways, she is a little too gently mocking of the hoi polloi, as if to wink at her friends who have also been underpaid entry-level museum toilers, kind of like how waiters make fun of customers, even the ones they like. I don't think it's because she's a snob, because she is also gently satirical of museum muckety-mucks. But the social reality is that must people DO feel looked down upon by the guardians of high culture, and joking about divorcees in sensible shoes, or the Southern-style appetizers at an evening outreach event, undercuts her goals a bit. Basically, *I'm* a middle-aged lady, and I've gone to those things and I know I probably look dowdy and unfashionable. But it's OK, I can take it. In fairness, she shows her true sincerity in other passages: My favorite chapter was about the working-class women in western Massachusetts open-mindedly and thoughtfully taking in an art installation that some might consider sacrilegious.
In sum, this is an interesting and generally fun read that offers a semi-insider's take on the museum world, with discussions of important institutional histories -- for example, MOMA -- as well as insights on several trendy topics in that world: e.g., the Barnes Collection in Philly, the Tate expansion, MassMOCA in the old industrial building, museums' adoption of "happy hour" events, and others. The book might make you want to dust off your paints; at least, you will look at museums and the infrastructure of "official art" with fresh eyes.
I found Whitaker's book by Googling "Why do museums make me tired and angry?" (Even though I am a bit of a culture vulture and love museums *in theory*.) I loved her title and subtitle. The answers I was seeking would have been about the physical experience of museums -- the dry air, the lighting that's somehow both too dim and too bright, etc. I also had a bone to pick with patrons who mechanically circuit the gallery looking at each work for a seemingly standardized amount of time before passive-aggressively crowding the person next to them to move on, as if the whole thing were an assembly line.
For the most part, Whitaker doesn't take up the physical conditions of museums that I was testily Googling about, except to critique situations in which a starchitect's costly new building overshadows the museum's content and mission. Her main concern, if I might generalize and offer my interpretation on it, is in the tension between art-as-creativity and art-as-reverential-0bject -- in other words, between the humanistic sense of play in artists and people in general, and the rather unfun guardian elites who have emerged from the art history discipline. Layered over this is the even more unfun "blockbuster exhibit" featuring high surcharges, crowds and thousands or millions of dollars in transportation costs for the art.
Some of the ideas Whitaker offered -- restated in my own words, so any mistakes are mine -- that I would like very much:
- More chairs in galleries. IMO, It's better to comfortably contemplate and even sketch a few excellent artworks than to inundate your brain with images that are difficult to absorb due to your aching feet and growing irritation at crowds. As if you were trying to become a human slide wheel.
- Less emphasis on those horrific audio tours that turn people into rude zombies. Ditto for tedious -- either overlong or dully written -- wall notes. Visual art is for LOOKING AT.
- Cheaper or even a return to free admission to the permanent collection so that people can "pop in" and get to know art. You shouldn't need to will yourself through 4 hours of museuming just to "get your money's worth."
- Longer hours on weekdays.
- More opportunities for the public to know art as a creator of it, not merely an appreciation of the culturally approved great works. At one point, she gave the example of a major urban museum that advertised (IIRC) about a dozen short classes, 2 studio art and 10 art history/appreciation. The studio classes sold out immediately and generated a waiting list, but not the art appreciation classes, indicating an unmet demand among laypeople to learn about making art.
This list just skims some of the more basic ideas. In the book, Whitaker covers the complexities of these and other more substantial ideas. It is very praiseworthy that her book offers suggestion, vision and hope, not only critique.
I had a few complaints that keep this at the level of "strong showing" and not "timeless work." First, it's a book of essays, not a thoroughly integrated argument, so there's a bit of catch-as-catch-can in the reading experience. Then, within the essays, Whitaker will juxtapose seemingly tangentially related sections of history, personal experience and journalism and allow the reader to notice what are supposed to be serendipitous connections; personally, I would have preferred the connections to be rendered more explicit through her generally excellent analytical skills. Finally, even though she seems to have a sincere desire to reach more people through museums, in more satisfying ways, she is a little too gently mocking of the hoi polloi, as if to wink at her friends who have also been underpaid entry-level museum toilers, kind of like how waiters make fun of customers, even the ones they like. I don't think it's because she's a snob, because she is also gently satirical of museum muckety-mucks. But the social reality is that must people DO feel looked down upon by the guardians of high culture, and joking about divorcees in sensible shoes, or the Southern-style appetizers at an evening outreach event, undercuts her goals a bit. Basically, *I'm* a middle-aged lady, and I've gone to those things and I know I probably look dowdy and unfashionable. But it's OK, I can take it. In fairness, she shows her true sincerity in other passages: My favorite chapter was about the working-class women in western Massachusetts open-mindedly and thoughtfully taking in an art installation that some might consider sacrilegious.
In sum, this is an interesting and generally fun read that offers a semi-insider's take on the museum world, with discussions of important institutional histories -- for example, MOMA -- as well as insights on several trendy topics in that world: e.g., the Barnes Collection in Philly, the Tate expansion, MassMOCA in the old industrial building, museums' adoption of "happy hour" events, and others. The book might make you want to dust off your paints; at least, you will look at museums and the infrastructure of "official art" with fresh eyes.
January 6, 2015
humorous and easy reading, while probing insightful questions like why do we even care about museum? what causes the boredom when visiting a museum?
May 6, 2012
Amy Whitaker has an MBA in addition to and MFA in paiting. She has worded for musueums (Guggenheim, MoMA and the Tate), she has painted, she has worked for a hedge fund.
--I just finished HOW BUILDINGS LEARN by Stewart Brand--MUSEUM LEGS compliments Brands book--art, structure, flow.
Oddly I also found compliment to other recent favorites: THE GIFT by Lewis Hyde and Anne Carson's ECONOMY OF THE UNLOST--here the context of market is simply recognized and explored in an act of discernment.
As is marketing, curating, wall labels, pick up scenes, poverty. And of course Art. Great book and commentary on our current age and our museums, our commons.
--I just finished HOW BUILDINGS LEARN by Stewart Brand--MUSEUM LEGS compliments Brands book--art, structure, flow.
Oddly I also found compliment to other recent favorites: THE GIFT by Lewis Hyde and Anne Carson's ECONOMY OF THE UNLOST--here the context of market is simply recognized and explored in an act of discernment.
As is marketing, curating, wall labels, pick up scenes, poverty. And of course Art. Great book and commentary on our current age and our museums, our commons.
June 25, 2017
I had been given this book by the author. We had met at a workshop. it took me forever to read it. Having read it, I appreciate art more and know quite a lot more about the process.
March 2, 2023
A book about museums that made me less interested in visiting one. Not sure that was not a little on purpose. Sort of a time tested marketing ploy.
December 27, 2012
"The ability of museums to be institutions of civic importance rides on their collective capacity for intellectual empathy -- their ability to speak to people in their own idiom and to bring in new audiences -- through tireless effort at customization of messages to different groups. There are any number of reasons why this doesn't happen...Knowledge benefits from this kind of exuberant free trade -- the more it circulates, the more there is. Obfuscation is a weird and obscure mercantilism, an isolationism that in an economy walls off a country, and in museums circumscribes a field of knowledge."
pp. 88-89p
pp. 88-89p
March 31, 2010
If everyone has a concept of an infinite universe that in fact conforms exactly to the confines of one’s own limited imagination, my personal version is a barbelled topography of art and finance, hovered over by a dense fog of earnest public-mindedness.
March 24, 2015
Afraid Whitaker's style of writing wore on me. Far too much use of the passive tense and abstract nouns. She is at her best when she is discussing concrete things -- the Tate, the Barnes, people she has worked with -- but there is too little of that.
June 23, 2016
Excellent, insightful and unusual book about museums and art. Amy Whitaker focuses on her own experience of museums and the museum experience of her friends to question the role of museums and art in our lives. A very worthwhile exploration
October 18, 2016
Took me FORRRRRREVER to finish this but I really enjoyed it. Not *too* heavy on the academic discourse to be inaccessible to an interested but not scholarly reader, and Whitaker's affection for museums and art of all kinds shines throughout.
September 6, 2012
I am really enjoying this one!
December 26, 2012
Loved this. Great if you're interested in museums and what they're about.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews