MY MUSEOLOGY

We always perceive the infinitude of a moment, but we cannot capture it, which made this exhibition seem appetising. Naturally, to say this contradicts some important thinking on perception -- the name Merleau-Ponty looms forth -- and so what I mean exceeds the literal. Being present for a moment, part of its simultaneity, is partially to absorb it and to experience its energy or presentness: this is to be present to the moment in its infinitude, not to apprehend the impossible totality of it. Infinite is infinite. This exhibition claims to explore this complex between the presentness of a performed moment and its representation. And so, when we look at the David Hockney , the jarring of stillness and action creates the overall energy of the piece. The instant after the dive is artistically (gesturally, figuratively) captured upon the canvas. This painting of an action after the performance of it aligns perfectly with the ethos of the exhibition, and, of course,  A Bigger Splash ...

Remembering too well engenders sadness, in which case the nearly two-year absence here ought to be lamentable. In fact I'm glad to see when, what, and how I last wrote here. For it represents a productive history, the beginning of something that can only be resumed, not undone, and it permits a brief meditation on  the feeling of seeing something of my own history unchanged in the knowledge that, while lives can be measured by the strictures of our formalisations of time (or our concessions to it), the multiplicity of my experiences and the evident continuation of my history in spite of the absence of a centralised discursive record of it frees us from over-organised perspectives on ourselves, what we've done, who we've been, and what that says about who we are. This, then, is the collapsing of a twenty-or-so-month caesura, a reconciliation of an extraneously qualified shortfall. Gently does it nudge us, too, towards thinking about history and now, and about museums as st...