MY MUSEOLOGY

A new one for me, The Cinema Museum in London.

I'm formulating a response to Niklas Maak, Charlotte Klonk and Thomas Demand's 'The White Cube and Beyond' in Tate Etc. (Issue 21, Spring 2011, pages 78-91), that I'll post soon.  For the moment here's a video adaptation of some of the perspectives expressed in the article, which makes for good introductory reading to the history of the use of museum space.

Definitions are notoriously slippery, yet for at least two particular reasons they're helpful.  First, clarifying a position allows people to determine their understanding of it from which they can better contribute to the discussion, or leave it.  And second, their notorious slipperiness make definitions a prime starting-ground for critical debate.  What is a museum? It's clear from my Miró post that in my estimation the Tate Modern is a museum, but before I started this blog I'd always referred to it as a gallery and in conversation I still would.  Efficiency makes me call it a museum.  Since the blog is about museum practice, or museology - the business of collecting, storing, and interpreting material culture for enjoyment and edification in the present and analysis and wonder in the future - if I were to call the Tate specifically a gallery, some might ask where its place in the blog was.  In the broad understanding of the term, the Tate is a museum (think 'MoMA&

Visiting this made this morning utterly worthwhile and immeasurably inspiring.  It's exhausting, unnervingly despondent at points and, for all that, happily provocative.  I was accompanied by my best friend, some of whose commentary I'll include in this entry for its trenchant observations.  Arriving early meant we were among the first crush to enter the galleries, but that was no surprise given the breadth of publicity that has been spinning around The Ladder of Escape .  I took some notes, thought a lot, chattered a little, and lamented at not being able to take photographs or make a video.  This aside, I was there, and here is what I have to say about it; I'll use the three questions I've mentioned in earlier posts to structure the entry. Curation + Implied narrative/s There are over 160 pieces in the 13 galleries making up The Ladder of Escape which include painting, drawing and sculpture; an array of supports across canvas, velours paper, Masonite and copper

This blog, ideally, should explore the culture of museology.  That's why I'm focusing on the staging of the Miró exhibition, because it will help me to understand the use of space for the showing of art.  The three questions I've chosen to ask of the exhibition go some way towards starting this in a more structured way.  This is what I suppose I want to get at with the first question What narrative or narratives does the show's curation seem to imply?   Have the curators tried to construct a single exhibition story, or a series of stories?  Whatever answers emerge from this will help to assess the extent to which the exhibition is a learning experience .  That interaction between the art in the space and the story or stories the show organisers intended causes a learning event since it is where spectators develop knowledge.  The final question, How does the staging of Miró here compare with the staging of Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons ? encourages further discussion

There are only two days until Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape opens at Tate Modern, so I thought that I should put together an entry to help me understand how I'm going to approach the exhibition and write about it.  Miró first came to my attention in my teens, when I remember buying a print of Blue II (1961) that I subsequently had framed and hung in my room along with Matisse's Creole Dancer (1950).  His oeuvre was certainly formative in my 'awakening to art', as it were, which makes the Tate's "first major retrospective of [his] work in London in nearly 50 years" an exciting destination.  Now that I've started this blog, however, the importance of visiting has redoubled: I'd like to use the experience to learn how the curators staged the exhibition and then to speculate on the use of museum space as a learning environment for art. The roughly 150 art works on display will include drawing, prints and sculptures alongside paintings, which from

[Originally written on 13 February 2011] http://blog.tate.org.uk/?p=3145 I knew nothing of Orozco’s oeuvre. I did not know his name. Perhaps that’s why I was so touched and impressed by it, but that is just a theory. As for certainty, I was impressed, touched and inspired by the exhibition, from the vivid simplicity and immediacy of My Hand is My Heart (clay artifact + wall-mounted double photograph), through the chilling and nihilistic rows of discarded lint in Lintels, to the charm and humour of tins of catfood atop melons. Orozco’s work in the Tate’s current exhibition demonstrates diversity and attends to our mortality, but I would rather discuss its capacity to invite participation. For instance, the relative vastness of Lintels and Chicotes includes one as a spectator in the sculptures, making it impossible not to take part in the work.

In my eagerness to start this blog I realise that the first posts (of images taken at Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle) might seem just to hang aimlessly in the blogosphere.  Admittedly, this is part of my project: to allow the images and posts to form whatever story anyone choosing to view them makes.  However, as I'd like not to exclude anyone from the museums, galleries, archives, museology, and curatorship debate, I hope that this entry makes sense of what I've done so far, and of how at this early stage I see the blog developing. There is a folder of images that I'm working with at the moment to include in a post about curatorial space.  This will also refer to earlier posts to start a discussion about the various methods used to display the Bowes' collections from which I'll be able to speculate about how space affects visitor reception and interaction with the museum.  Of course this isn't a new debate, but it is one of the most important that the curator f

I've realised that my 'Surface and storage' post isn't interactive (I'm getting to grips with creating slideshows), so in the meantime, have a look at these clocks.

A selection of tables and storage furniture from the Bowes collection.

Some of the male subjects.  Ditto.

Just a few of the portraits at Bowes featuring female subjects. The same applies for the photography as stated in the previous post.

These are posted in my order of personal aesthetic preference.  Please forgive the rudimentary camera skills, including those times when I failed to handle the reflection of the display cases.

The blog begins.  Over the coming days I'll be posting entries containing photographs and some extraneous blurb about what took my fancy at the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle when I visited for the first time last Sunday with my family.  Although I'm from north-east England I hadn't had the privilege of seeing the collection before, and I think it makes a fitting first post.  The museum's collection is a wonderful mixture of pieces from all places and all times. Rather than pulling together the best of what the internet has to offer concerning the history of Bowes, I'd rather let the posts relating to the museum tell a story.  As a final note at this point, please note that I don't stand to profit from any of the content I post on this blog; it's more of an experimental diary for my own and others' enjoyment.  If the situation changes in future, I'll let you know.