Museums are places of “small and large epiphanies”, of reflection, contemplation, where values endure, writes Nicholas Serota, the former director of Tate, in his foreword to Treasure Palaces, a compendium of great writers visiting great museums. Although the anthology covers huge ground, common themes emerge: the importance of making personal connections, familiarity with collections and authenticity. There is a lot of food for thought here for museum professionals.
As institutions try to create a sense of ownership among the communities they exist in, it is perhaps heartening that this feeling of private privilege appears to be shared by many of the authors who use phrases such as “my museum”. Claire Messud has visited the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on countless occasions, sometimes taking her children, who appear to be the visitors we all hope for. “The children found their favourites ... My daughter Livia, at about six, tried to copy a Frank W Benson painting … and she thinks of the original as her own.”
While it is nice that Don Paterson approaches a Constable depiction of Salisbury Cathedral “like an old friend”, for many visitors that feeling of ownership, or even welcome, does not exist. I can’t help feeling alienated a little myself by this attitude. Having said that, in the same piece the irreverence is also refreshing, such as Paterson’s description of a Renoir as “a 10ft biscuit tin”. But that is what it is like seeing old friends: you love them dearly and you mock them.
The 20 essays come from a series, Authors on Museums, that was originally published in Intelligent Life magazine. In her preface, the commissioning editor, Maggie Fergusson, describes a few of her “interesting misses”. Misses in this context seem not to be authors who just don’t like museums, but also who don’t like them in the right way. I am not sure whether David Sedaris’s description of himself as a “gift shop and cafe person” bars him from being a museum person. Perhaps these authors, in the words of Rose Tremain, feel “imprisoned by the demand to come up with a suitable emotion”. That is what’s missing from the book: a few dissenting voices.
When Richard Ford admits he gives himself 45 minutes “before the floors turn to concrete and my eyes don’t focus”, I find myself thinking 45 minutes is pretty good going. Maybe I’m just not the right kind of museum person either.
While museums are defined as places that hold collections, New York’s Tenement Museum and Villa San Michele, on the Italian island of Capri, serve to remind us that thinking about objects in terms of real and fake often misses the point.
Perhaps a focus on authenticity might be more helpful, as at Dove Cottage, a house on the edge of Grasmere in the Lake District, where the Wordsworth Trust have replaced original Times newspaper pages that the poet’s sister Dorothy used as wallpaper. Ann Wroe describes the effort as done with “great care and ingenuity”, with the trust finding pages from the correct dates.
Allison Pearson likes the Musée Rodin in Paris because it is “scuffed and peeling”, Rory Stewart likes the National Museum of Afghanistan because it has none of the “curatorial tricks”. Julian Barnes goes further, saying “[museums] have had their spirit crushed by museumification, by curatorial intervention”.
After a while, this book makes the modern museum professional think “Why do I bother?”.
My feeling is that these writers belong to a privileged few: the ones who have the good fortune to be able to greet the greats like old friends.
This book could do with some dissenting voices and a few less-conventionally held establishment views.
Katherine McAlpine is the public programmes producer at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
As institutions try to create a sense of ownership among the communities they exist in, it is perhaps heartening that this feeling of private privilege appears to be shared by many of the authors who use phrases such as “my museum”. Claire Messud has visited the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on countless occasions, sometimes taking her children, who appear to be the visitors we all hope for. “The children found their favourites ... My daughter Livia, at about six, tried to copy a Frank W Benson painting … and she thinks of the original as her own.”
While it is nice that Don Paterson approaches a Constable depiction of Salisbury Cathedral “like an old friend”, for many visitors that feeling of ownership, or even welcome, does not exist. I can’t help feeling alienated a little myself by this attitude. Having said that, in the same piece the irreverence is also refreshing, such as Paterson’s description of a Renoir as “a 10ft biscuit tin”. But that is what it is like seeing old friends: you love them dearly and you mock them.
The 20 essays come from a series, Authors on Museums, that was originally published in Intelligent Life magazine. In her preface, the commissioning editor, Maggie Fergusson, describes a few of her “interesting misses”. Misses in this context seem not to be authors who just don’t like museums, but also who don’t like them in the right way. I am not sure whether David Sedaris’s description of himself as a “gift shop and cafe person” bars him from being a museum person. Perhaps these authors, in the words of Rose Tremain, feel “imprisoned by the demand to come up with a suitable emotion”. That is what’s missing from the book: a few dissenting voices.
When Richard Ford admits he gives himself 45 minutes “before the floors turn to concrete and my eyes don’t focus”, I find myself thinking 45 minutes is pretty good going. Maybe I’m just not the right kind of museum person either.
While museums are defined as places that hold collections, New York’s Tenement Museum and Villa San Michele, on the Italian island of Capri, serve to remind us that thinking about objects in terms of real and fake often misses the point.
Perhaps a focus on authenticity might be more helpful, as at Dove Cottage, a house on the edge of Grasmere in the Lake District, where the Wordsworth Trust have replaced original Times newspaper pages that the poet’s sister Dorothy used as wallpaper. Ann Wroe describes the effort as done with “great care and ingenuity”, with the trust finding pages from the correct dates.
Allison Pearson likes the Musée Rodin in Paris because it is “scuffed and peeling”, Rory Stewart likes the National Museum of Afghanistan because it has none of the “curatorial tricks”. Julian Barnes goes further, saying “[museums] have had their spirit crushed by museumification, by curatorial intervention”.
After a while, this book makes the modern museum professional think “Why do I bother?”.
My feeling is that these writers belong to a privileged few: the ones who have the good fortune to be able to greet the greats like old friends.
This book could do with some dissenting voices and a few less-conventionally held establishment views.
Katherine McAlpine is the public programmes producer at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich