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THE SLOW DOWN MOVEMENT
MUSEUM AS THE MENTAL REFUGE FOR
THE DIGITALLY DISTRACTED GENERATION by Lisa Hi l ton
What are museums for? In terms of their evolution from the private Wunderkammers of great Renaissance patrons such as the Medici, through the state-spon- sored institutions of eighteenth century Europe and the philanthropic foundations of the USA in the nineteenth, the answer would appear to have been relatively simple: in the words of the critic James Panero, they were “orderly warehouses”- places where the venerated artefacts of the past could be studied by the public with the goal of aesthetic or historical enlightenment. Since the 1960’s, the purpose of the museum has become a far more contentious issue. Museums are now a multi-billion dollar international business, they provide venues for everything from childrens’ sleep-overs to fashion shows, to Michelin-starred restaurants. The socially-oriented museum is vastly powerful–it can regenerate neigh- bourhoods, even whole cities, command huge public budgets and transform both artists and the architects whose creations house their work into celebrities. But where does that leave the collections and, as visitors, our relationship with them? For some critics, the neglect of the visited in favour of the visitor has had a highly detrimental effect on the original function of the museum. What is lost when museums cease to be “about something” in favour of being “for somebody”? If sculptures, paintings or antiquities are considered worthwhile only to the extent of their relevance to their “consumers”, muse- ums abdicate their autonomy in favour of a reflective narcissism, which to critics like Panero appears pernicious, if not suicidal: “such progressive ideol- ogy, combined with what I would call a non-profit profit motive that seeks ever larger crowds, greater publicity, expanding spaces, ballooning budgets, and bloated bureaucracy—a circular system that feeds on itself—has turned the… museum into a neoliberal juggernaut.”
In this argument, the museum has delivered itself up to our digitally-distracted age, becoming one more hectic locus for the display of the individual ego. We take a selfie in front of a Cezanne or a Velazquez to prove to our followers that we have been in the presence of something extraordinary, when what we are actually doing is foregrounding ourselves within the artwork, this extraordinary object on which we are, in fact, turning our backs. We give the cold
shoulder to Michelangelo and make our subject our own banality, degrading the piece to no more than a frame for our grinning faces, even as our need to take such a photo subverts our intentions. And often, I do feel this way. I don’t want to peep at Rothko at Tate Modern between a phalanx of agitated toddlers. I get irritated by the horses of bored and bewildered tourists plodding dutifully around the mosaics of San Marco. Yet I refuse to believe that we would be better to return to a past where the museum was a dusty secular cathedral, to be approached in reverent silence. At every stage of cultural history, the prospect of the many having access to what was previously reserved for the few has been met with outrage and dire whisperings of decline. Earlier this year, I sat in The Royal Academy for about an hour, quite alone, watching the wondrous Mortlake Tapestries of the Charles I exhibition flutter and murmur on the gentle currents of the gallery’s air. It was a transcendental experience. And for everyone who has experienced such a transformative moment, we would do well to remember that they are support- ed by the vitality and dynamism of a museum culture which seeks to invite people in. Rather than adopt a black and white approach of populism against purity, it might be worth thinking about how museums can continue to exist as ‘slow spaces’ whilst thriving within a modern com- mercial landscape. We have quiet carriages on trains, why not quiet galleries? Days when the interactive digital experiences are turned off? Late openings mean that museums can be enjoyed by families during the day whilst reserving more contemplative moments for adults. Sitting in front of an artwork in perfect silence is a luxury, but not an impossibility, and potentially might open the museum to the currents of mindfulness and wellbeing which are so much part of the contemporary zeitgeist. If the purpose of the twenty- first century museum is expansiveness, in every sense, then it seems entirely plausible to privilege the individual’s private aesthetic journey without insisting on a monopoly on beauty.
Lisa Hilton is a widely published arts historian and writer based in Venice, who regulalry writes about culture for the likes Vogue, The Spectator and Literary Review, among others.
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