MY MUSEOLOGY

This is a note on the curatorial impulse and the relevance of curated exhibitions, but first a digression serving to contextualise the educative mission of cultural institutions vis-à-vis the broader learning landscape. Higher education in the UK is receiving more widespread attention at the moment due to last week’s publication of a Government green paper on the proposed Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). A theme emerging from the discourse surrounding this paper and the implications of implementing the framework and the perceived need for it is talk of consumers and producers. Now this transactional vocabulary is not new – I remember in 2007 hearing a university director and principal talk of the tendency of some students to behave like the customers of universities, and he protested that the relationship between institution, staff and students was not so clear cut – but the use of such vocabulary has become more nuanced. For we also read in these current discussions sur...

[Digital media consistently use images from Twombly's Untitled/ Bacchus series as illustrative content to accompany stories about the money dispute with the Twombly Foundation. They put me in mind of the violent sea (an unsurprising association if one considers the artist's Hero and Leandro inter alia), turned red like that horrific scene in Lord of the Flies following the fall of Piggy, or photographs I think I remember of unreal-red, carmine seas, dyed with the blood of whale-hunting. Additions to the dispute story have been in the press today, and so I think the world's emphasising value .] Courtauld's Picasso exhibition is tiny, comprised of two rooms or a vestibule and a room in which are hung 19 or so paintings. The arrangement is systematic and logical, although I must confess to having been influenced by the large-print booklet of the painting labels, which I always pick up because I feel awkward standing too long trying to read and consider what they say wh...

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 ...

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...