Museums are the past, they are permanent, they are formal, they intrigue and bore in equal measure. I have been using the museum as a fictional device for some time, through the creation of my own Museum of Imaginative Knowledge, and want to reflect on some of the qualities of museums which attract artists.
Museums are sites of pilgrimage, know for their ‘treasures’ and ‘wonders’ which in London and other major cities attract millions of visitors. Art museums (although the label is used less often in the UK) such as the National Gallery provide both a visual repository of the history of Western Art and allow for its interpretation and continuing influence.
I am perhaps most interested in the interaction between the environment of the museum and the objects and displays which it contains. For the National Gallery, this is its position on Trafalgar Square, and its interiors, such as richly-coloured wallpapers and marble skirting boards. The paintings are usually contained within golden carved frames, all creating an atmosphere of both refinement and elitism. We, the visitor, are not at home here.
The contrast to this is Tate Modern, or any other contemporary gallery which seeks to elevate the independence of the artwork by the use of white walls. The idea that the viewer must not be distracted by the gaudy interiors of older galleries produces a space which is both minimal yet also repressive in its clinical whiteness. We, the visitor, are equally not at home here.
It was at Tate Modern in 2011 where I first developed such concerns, at a Joan Miro exhibition. I became disenchanted in a large white room, itself full of large minimal paintings, and found a loose screw on the floor, which for me was of more interest than the artworks being so earnestly presented. This habit then led me in 2013 to the discovery of the Tate Toblerone, a discarded chocolate wrapper close to a Francis Bacon painting.
Such detritus may be acceptable within the rectangle of a Kurt Schwitters artwork, yet to display the Tate Toblerone within a glass case would be to destroy its authenticity as a piece of litter and to enshrine it as a work of art.
