Elizabeth Marlowe’s Review of ‘The Brutish Museum’

Elizibeth Marlowe reviews The Brutish Museum for the International Journal of Cultural Property:

Dan Hicks’s new book, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution, has made a splash. Designated by the New York Times as one of the best art books of 2020, featured on blogs, podcasts, webinars, and in mainstream newspapers, the book and its author, the professor of contemporary archaeology at the University of Oxford and curator at Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, are suddenly everywhere. This Zoom-enabled ubiquity can be understood in the context of the larger historical reckonings of 2020 and 2021 – a global pandemic fueled by global capitalism, climate change, and incompetent governance; a breaking point in the long saga of police brutality against racial minorities and white indifference to it; a toppling of statues to colonialist and Confederate leaders around the world; and, as I was finishing the book, a final attempt to impeach a hate-mongering US president for fomenting rebellion against the very democratic institutions he swore to serve. In its passionately argued call for the restitution of cultural artifacts looted in one of the most notoriously brutal episodes of colonial violence, The Brutish Museums encapsulates the zeitgeist.

Continue reading, no paywall…

What your next Museum visit may be like

This is as close as we’ll be able to get to the MFA Houston for a while…

I miss museums, and it sounds like the next time I visit one I’ll look like I’m trying to rob the place.

Garty Tinterow, the director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston offered some insights into how his institution is planning to safely reopen, whenever that may be. He did a useful Zoom interview with the Houston Chronicle’s Molly Glentzer, and here’s a brief excerpt:

Q. When do you expect the museum to reopen, and what will be different?

I check my mail every day but the crystal ball hasn’t arrived yet. Opening by July 1 seems to be feasible, given our most pessimistic models. The pandemic will bring permanent change to art museums such as ours. We’re going to have to live with this virus for quite some time. Our biggest challenge is learning gradually; it’s going to have to begin with baby steps. We’ll all learn how to visit a museum differently. We are adopting procedures for low-touch entrances, exits and visits. We’re going to change the way we deliver information so individuals so they won’t have to touch things or pick up things that aren’t their own. An attendant with a mask and gloves will open the door. You’ll probably be wearing a mask. We won’t hand you gallery guides unless they can be sanitized; you’ll probably download material on your own device.

Many museums provide a textbook case of how to live in this new world. For a survey of the Association of Museum Directors, we calculated how many visitors we could admit based on the square feet in our display spaces. If they have six feet of circumference around them and move through the space as equally distributed as atoms of oxygen, how many people would there be? Probably 800 at a time. We can easily accommodate that. They won’t be in one space; they’ll be throughout our campus in multiple buildings. Maybe, if we have a film program in Brown Auditorium, people can be seated on every other aisle and alternate seats. There is room at the MFAH for social distancing.

Gary Tinterow

Molly Glentzer, What Will Your next Visit to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Be Like?, Houston Chronicle, Apr. 23, 2020, https://www.chron.com/life/article/What-will-your-next-visit-to-the-Museum-of-Fine-15223418.php [https://perma.cc/4S7T-8VLT].

Matthes on ‘Radical Redistribution of Art’

The Ilissos sculpture, on display in London, originally adorned the Parthenon

Erich Hatala Matthes, a Prof. of Philosophy at Wellesley College has authored an argument for the radical redistribution of wealth in the open source journal Ergo. From the abstract:

Museums are home to millions of artworks and cultural artifacts, some of which have made their way to these institutions through unjust means. Some argue that these objects should be repatriated (i.e., returned to their country, culture, or owner of origin). However, these arguments face a series of philosophical challenges. In particular, repatriation, even if justified, is often portrayed as contrary to the aims and values of museums. However, in this paper, I argue that some of the very considerations museums appeal to in order to oppose repatriation claims can be turned on their heads and marshaled in favor of the practice. In addition to defending against objections to repatriation, this argument yields the surprising conclusion that the redistribution of cultural goods should be much more radical than is typically supposed.

An interesting argument, and it sounds to me like he is making a case for cultural justice.

Erich Hatala Matthes, Repatriation and the Radical Redistribution of Art, 4 Ergo (2017).

‘Art is Therapy’ at the Rijksmuseum

A blinking neon green sign greets visitors at the Rijksmuseum
A blinking neon green sign greets visitors at the Rijksmuseum

 

What should a museum be? Should it be a collection of the world’s masterpieces accumulated in great cities? Should it be a smaller museum devoted to showing the history of a region, town or culture? We think a lot about these big questions around here by responding to questions like ‘Who Owns Antiquity?‘ or what does property and justice require when resolving art disputes.

But in a new project Alain de Botton and John Armstrong have made the case that art can and should be more. Their argument is simple: art can help people leave more interesting and fulfilled lives. Art History as a discipline has much to offer, but the authors argue it should not be the only way to enjoy and experience works of art. Rather than focusing on art historical periods and dates, we can also think more broadly about how the image resonates with the viewer. That’s a bold claim to be sure, but the attempt is exciting and novel in a way that few art museums are able to achieve consistently. De Botton is known for a string of works including: How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Architecture of Happiness, Religion for Atheists, and the terrific The Art of Travel.

The project takes many forms including a website, apps for your phone, a book which makes the full case, and even a new exhibition at the Rijksmuseum.

The exhibition intervention takes the form of large yellow notes which inform and comment on the works on display. Perhaps most remarkable of all, the Rijksmuseum gave these writers access to intervene in the museum on this scale after a lengthy restoration.

So what exactly did they do? Here is one example which reads:

On the wall behind you, probably behind three rows of people, hangs one of the most famous works of art in the world.IMG_2661

This is bad news. The extreme fame of a work of art is almost always unhelpful because, to touch us, art has to elicit a personal response – and that’s hard when a painting is said to be so distinguished. This paintins is quite out of synch with its status in any case because, above all else, it wants to show us that the ordinary can be very special. The picture says that looking after a simple but beautiful home, cleaning the yard, watching over the children, darning clothes – and doing these thngs faithfully and without despair – is life’s real duty.

This is an anti-heroic picture, a weapon against false images of glamour. It refuses to accept that true glamour depends on amazing feats of courage or on the attainment of status. It argues that doing the modest things that are expected of all of us is enough. The picture asks you to be a little like it is: to take the attitudes it loves and to apply them to your life.

If the Netherlands had a Founding Document, a concentrated repository of its values, it would be this small picture. It is the Dutch contribution to the world’s understanding of happiness – and its message doesn’t just belong in the gallery.

Sickness:

Life is elsewhere.

I have a misplaced longing for glamour.

And here, on the day we visited is the view behind us, jam-packed with visitors eager to see Vermeer’s works:

IMG_2659

And a close-up version of the terrific Vermeer described in the intervention:

Johannes_Vermeer_-_Gezicht_op_huizen_in_Delft,_bekend_als_'Het_straatje'_-_Google_Art_Project

This note resonated with me, and I’m sure many others. How strange that sometimes it is easier to achieve the kind of personal connection to a work of art via technology than fighting cell phones and fellow museum-goers.

Continue reading “‘Art is Therapy’ at the Rijksmuseum”