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For my reference...

This post and the links below are for my reference, so I can pick 'em up again at work tomorrow, and forward along to a few folks to whom they're promised.

From Ken Baker:

Museums have boasted of expanding their education programs in recent years, a trend necessary to counter the dwindling of arts programs in public schools.

But a museum sometimes teaches most when it intercedes least between artworks and their viewers
...
Wall labels here and there explain the nonobvious historical significance of an object or easily overlooked aspects of its content or context. But in many cases, visitors find themselves confronting what they see with few or no extraneous promptings to respond.

What a relief. Too much didactic material that appears in museums these days serves to protect visitors from the demands for close looking, the surprise and the occasional bafflement that visual artworks by their nature produce.

To the extent that a museum puts itself forward as a mere diversionary destination or a hothouse for potted ideas, it misrepresents the difficulty and reward of a real preoccupation with art.


To read the full text click here.

Which leads to questions of "The Compleat Leader"....for more from the Getty click here:

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