art museum wall text and "audio tours" and yr position in the spiralling continuum of contrarianism

i fn hate them

when u see everyone ignoring the actual paintings for a vague biographical frag. + simplfd artspeak

Can't stand audio tours, plus they make museums such awful experiences (trying to actually *look* at a piece of art and wading your way through a mob of people who are just vegging out and not even looking at the picture, just absorbed in this mobile phone/headphone thing which is on a preprogrammed script so they just staaaand there for ages)

The wall text I don't mind so much. Well, I prefer if it's just name and artist with maybe date info and tiny bit of context. Really dislike the ones that provide huge amounts of commentary, they totally make me think of The Painted Word (the idea of the criticism blown up huge and hung on the wall, with a little tiny snapshot of the painting in the place where the text would have been.)

But then again, if it's some kind of themed exhibition where they're placing artwork in context and telling you about the history of the work and the artist, I like it when they hand out pamphlets because you can read those in your own time, or skim, or read them while you're at the painting if it's not busy, and then at the end you get to take them home and read/learn/think about it all again.

So really, it depends.

when they're dumb, they're really dumb, but some of my fave exhibits have been really well curated wrt text + audio tours, partic the frida kahlo exhibit at Philly Art Museum a couple years ago -- i thought did this excellently. also more important to me when it's a somewhat obscure (to me at least) exhibit and it gives me context that makes it more worthwhile.

worst curated exhibit i ever saw was this history of the model thing exhibit at the Met a year ago or so. so stupid.

Can't stand audio tours, but have no problem with text. Though I think my ideal is context and explanation off to one side, just artist/title/materials/date actually on the wall next to the painting.

i do hate when the text is a huge thing up on the wall by the door not even attached to a specific painting and if you want to read it you have to stand there looking like an idiot

yah i mean i want dates and materials. not "this is inspired by nature"

at least in contemp. museums its obv that they dont even aspire2 coherence

i kinda like the thing where you can use your cell phone to call a # and listen to the artist awkwardly describe their work. i've only done it when i knew the artist though.

Nah, Mordy, I prefer that. It's like an introduction to the room, you read it and then go off and look and the art without stopping to read lots of text in between each one.

btw this is mainly inspired by paul thek at the whitney right now. really truly awfully obtrusively weird things going on in the wall txt

pretty good show if lazily curated

Yeah, I'm with emil.y on this. I like reading the overview before (or even after is good, too!) on the wall of the room, especially if it's separated from the art so you can read it without getting in the way of anyone trying to look at a picture.

it just feels like lazy curating to me. a good show will build its own logic and context. w/o narrating itself

Well, part of the reason is to provide historical and/or biographical information that the casual observer may not actually be aware of.

Especially when dealing with not so well known artists whose work you are trying to bring to a more general audience.

I mean, I kinda like knowing stuff like "this is the work that featuredartist produced during their five year stretch in Venice at the turn of the 15th Century, and here is some information about the political state in Venice at that time, what the artist was doing there, who they were working for, some interesting trivia and titbits and hey, check out the allegorical figuring of the figure of Mars in a couple of the paintings, which refers to the warmongering tendencies of the current Doge..." - that interests me, and I like being able to read about it.

i think they can be cool

are you against guides as well? or reading books about art? i mean if you can float in your own blissful bubble of appreciation that's good 4 u but some people enjoy the context, the biographical detail, etc. plus people dont talk with them on so they should only contribute to your own superior contemplations

I am generally lost without text in a gallery. big fan of good titles. never had a good experience with audio.

bio on artist is good, but I have seen some that are like a resume which is nagl

the best ever was this one in rome where the scion of the family who used to own the mansion (reina sofia?) where the museum was located reminisced about going to balls in the rooms you were standing in and stuff

i mean obv some will suck, but not as a rule

I've only done one audio tour and that was at the Experience Music Project. I found it amazingly useful in the hall of guitars, but yeah it slows you WAY down...takes you hours to go through an exhibit that might have only taken you half an hour ordinarily. Which could be a good or a bad thing depending on how you look at it.

For myself, for art exhibits in general I prefer a blarp at the beginning of the exhibit, and then names/mediums/years etc for the artwork, maybe a section marker here and there to group artworks if they need it. I'd rather take in the work on its own merits. But I like to buy a program afterwards and read about it. If it needs it, fine, but my preference is not having it.

Guided tours can be cool

I guess I understand catering to people who are intimidated by art, people who feel like they need a lot of explanation and background to 'get' what they're looking at. If they're trying to appeal to a wider audience then its almost unavoidable, unfortunately.
Which I thinks speaks to a larger thing of how depressing it is that people (like my coworkers, family, etc) are so easily intimidated by art, like they don't trust their own eyes to tell them what they're seeing. It bums me out.

But it really depends on the context. If it's showing like a particular school of art and placing it in historical context, I don't think it hurts to contextualize with information...you don't *have* to read it.

Agh. I don't know what I think, which is now patently obvious

I guess I understand catering to people who are intimidated by art, people who feel like they need a lot of explanation and background to 'get' what they're looking at. If they're trying to appeal to a wider audience then its almost unavoidable, unfortunately.

This is so off the mark, I think. It isn't like some art goers are sophisticated enough to appreciate art without context but the rest of us are too stupid and need context to enjoy it. Yes, there's something about the primacy of the initial exchange and Sontag-esque sensuality of experience but also -- smart people who work in art professionally (and even not) learn context! That stuff is important!

Also, in my experience, appreciating art is like refining your food palate. If you're one of the lucky few to be born with a perfect palate, congratz. It's like having perfect pitch, or whatever. But if you're a normal human being you need to be trained to have certain aesthetic experiences that are totally worth having!

guess the quality of the wall text varies, for some things it can be really interesting, for others it bears no real relationship to your own interpretation

like personally I have zero formal knowledge or education about art but lately i've been going to a lot of galleries, i guess i find the wall text interesting the same way i might google the artist when i get home and read about their lives, tho in some instances the descriptions of how the works were made or why are sort of essential...imo.

my problem is not that they "help ppl out" but the means by which they do so tends to be by displacement. like here is this chick who died of brain tumours: HERE IS UR CONTEXT. instead of just using the art to explain itself. i dont wanna be all dancing abt archtecture but srsly thats how it feels

pro-tip: without proper reference to wall text you run the risk of sonning yr wife about her professed ignorance of british artists using the example of an artist she knows well who is in fact american and consequently looking like a bit of a tit.

or at least, i heard that that can happen

I absolutely hate exhibits with no information. No curator will decide to put a piece in a show just by "looking at it", so why should the average museum/gallery goer be expected to "get it" just by "looking at it"?

worst curated exhibit i ever saw was this history of the model thing exhibit at the Met a year ago or so. so stupid.

this was terrible, yes. LACMA has a great show up right now about the history of women and men's fashion through the 18th and 19th centuries that is MUCH much better, i hope it tours!

t/s: exhaustion from small heavy wall-text vs. exhaustion from small heavy text in the art itself

i kind of love when the wall text accompanying a work is an excerpt from an artist's correspondence or journal entry or suchlike and not just a biographical summation of whatever was happening in the world at large at the time

i like wall text. i don't know why i'd look more like an idiot reading that than looking at art. sometimes the text provides useful contextual info and critical perspective, sometimes not. people certainly can't be expected to know everything about everything in advance, and museums have to be (and should be, it's a good thing) geared to all sorts of visitors. kids, students, casual tourists, aficionados, professionally contrarian hipsters who take pride in sneering at everything, etc. hell, if the text only gives the latter something to sneer it, then it's accomplished at least one social function.

audio and docent tours i'm less fond of. for the most part, i'd rather investigate thing on my own time in my own way (i.e., moderate contrarianism). have enjoyed them, though, especially when re-visiting collections i've seen many times.

What I said upthread came off as snobby and I didn't intend it that way...was over-generalizing but honestly I was kind of lost in what I was trying to say anyway so, blah.

Context is cool. Too much context is distracting. My parents always seemed to spend way more time reading the little blarps than looking at the actual artwork, or thumbing through their programs when they were standing in front of a painting...it didn't bother me, but it just made for a different experience of the exhibit when we all went together. If anything it made me more self-conscious for enjoying the artwork. I guess that's kind of what I was trying to say. Again, not that that applies to everyone's experience of art. I'm not a 'whee no handrails, I don't need ANY context I understand all art nanny nanny boo boo' person.

i kind of love when the wall text accompanying a work is an excerpt from an artist's correspondence or journal entry or suchlike and not just a biographical summation of whatever was happening in the world at large at the time

ya but on the other hand this oftentimes leads to the most inane, meaningless quotes getting painted across the gallery like their some sort of ~artist wisdom~. the Met's Leon Levenstein exhibition had a great example of this with something as banal as "I see. I act. I photograph" in huge type above some of the photos. i mean, give me a break

my last post was kinda sneery itself (in sneering at those who sneer). not targeted at you, VG, but at plaxico's "spiraling continuum of contrarianism". FWIW.

yeah, should've appended a caveat that when done well, the journal entry/quote thing reads as thoughtful curation but yes obv it can veer towards that kind of thing

Awesome idea for a thread, BTW.

I think that the journal entries thing are a good "as well as" (context about the artist and their world) - but a lot of this really boils down to "good curation is preferable to bad" rather than absolutes about what you do or do not want to see at an exhibit.

Also this thread made me think that it highlights the difference, for me, between "Art Museum" and "Gallery" - like, when I go to a museum, I expect to learn something, not just about art, but about history in general. And the assumption, for me at least, is, when I'm in a museum, there's that whole "the past is a foreign country" thing where I don't want to assume that I just have my own, in-this-time reaction to the piece (though obviously I do) but I also want it placed within the-world-as-it-was-then.

In a Gallery, I'm much happier to be left alone with the art. Like, all I really want is some brief biographical detail and maybe an artist's statement (though I usually don't read the things until I'm done) because the context of a gallery is that this is art that is in reaction to the 21st Century World Now and I am already floating in the context in which the art is intended to function and reflect. So I want nothing in a gallery except a name and a title because good art shouldn't require a massive intellectual backpack.

History, however, does require a lens and a context to make sense of it, and not just project our time onto it. Sure, great art should *transcend* history - it should be able to speak across the ages and still make sense to us. But I'd still, personally, prefer to learn about that context because I dig History as a subject as much as I dig Art.

I don't hate them and I kind of like that they keep their users in amostly zombie-like trance. Wall text is useful sometimes. On a first viewing, though, I mostly just let it all soak in.

it's a quantity thing also i think w/r/t museums and galleries - if i'm gonna spend a very long time looking at stuff, i'd like a compelling curatorial argument to go along with it

^^ poss why i am quite pro wall-text in the context of an exhibition on a specific artist/movement/idea, where i'm expecting everything to have been organised w/in a curatorial framework? But when it's in the regular galleries it's a bit more "here is why we have put these paintings in this room!" and you feel a bit, i dunno, patronised.

audio tours are dreadful things though.

^ otm

though actually thinking about wall text - I went to the richard long exhibition at the tate, where some of the art was in the form of words painted up on the wall, and it took an active effort for me to remember that i had to pay attention to it because it was the art, not a bit of bumph i could ignore at will.

lawrence weiner to thread

lol

its not because i think that the wall text gives ppl the secret code, but you do ppl coming, only looking at it "getting" the exhib. and not actually having to see it. its like how i feel abt not bothering to watch the movie once you see the trailer (srsly there is no point really) but what bothers me is that it gives you an excuse not to have to do any work, but i dont mean that in a snobbish way, just that the writing tells you the thing to look at, so you do, and you're kindof robbed of the experience of actually being w/ and discovering something for yourself. Especially as the wall text often tends to gloss over or only include the part that helps slot into the curatorial narrative or

i agree with you but i'm also wary of museums proscribing a one-size-fits-all approach to experiencing any kind of artwork - like i feel guided tours are one way museums have come up with to guide patrons into avoiding those particular traps you mention, but then that approach has its own pitfalls as well

my own general approach is to look at the thing first, then read the text, then look at the thing again (if i care to)

only looking at it "getting" the exhib. and not actually having to see it

I think there's some uninterrogated stuff packed into this sentence. Particularly maybe about what kind of sensory/aesthetic experiences you privilege and which ones are "worthwhile."

^^ though I have to say that the worst wall text i remember at a museum was not from my place of employment, but from a place i worked at briefly that is across the street.

would love to have a ikr teaches me how to look at art & acquire a visual grammar (seriously, being genuine here)

feel like I am a lumpen boor when I go to most art shows :(

oh, and really looking forward to the wall text that accompanies the "how w1ne bec@me modern" show coming up at SFM0MA.

his feminist art thread on 1p3 is a syllabus within itself iirc

^^ thread was a collaborative effort "iirc"

interesting thread!

for me, the less text the better - names and dates, really all i want - but if text, then text should be as well-curated as the art, as has been said above. but i also have an art history background. i also have a not-great memory.

sometimes it's nice to have the text at the beginning of the exhibition - i just scan through it and read it again afterwards, or take an iphone pic. contextualizing text within, hrm, only at really necessary points. obv that's the curator's call, it all depends, blah blah blah, e.g., education vs experience-of-art and how to tie them together.

the issue of people gravitating towards text first is a serious one - i often forcibly stop myself from doing this - like, it's something the education system or museum-going in school groups drilled into us, i don't know. i vastly prefer the experience of the art without words, and the words after - often i just take an iphone pic of the words/plaque, tbh, for my memory which cannot remember names so well.

it's important to get away from words. there should be plaques that only become visible with They Live glasses.

haha i was gonna post "...that i helped contribute to" to that post but then i decided to leave work instead xp

donna - when are you gonna come up and visit SF?

poss. in january? depends on a lot of things but i may be staying w/ friends in either the east bay or south bay - nothing definite has been planned but i'll let you know when it happens tho!

i don't accept that wall text prevents people from developing visual comprehension skills or from making connections of their own. different people learn differently and use museums differently. it seems appropriate, therefore, to create an environment that serves many different types of visitors. some will want a detailed art history lesson, others entertainment. some will intently consider the works on display while others casually pass time with friends and family.

But see I'm basing this on the way people move through the galleries, huddles by the wall text and then glances at the art as they pass. these devices are designed to facilitate a particular mode of engagement which which placates peoples desire to "understand" the exhibition and I think it works like so: you read the explanation, glance at the work confirming the point that the wall text was making and move on. Sure you do learn something, but you learn more about the particular point the curator is trying to hammer home.

agree that the museum's presentation format is not common elsewhere, but it's not unique to art museums. all museums work in a similar way, as do visitor's centers & historical sites. these are social spaces that aim, in part, to educate and introduce. i have no problem with this, nor with what you call dilettantish viewers. there's nothing wrong with not yet knowing things, with being curious about what you do not yet know. and there's nothing wrong with helping the curious to better understand things. again, you can always skip the text if it doesn't interest you.

well one thing that does annoy me here, but its more gripe than actual complaint, is that these galleries are geared towards this partic mode of casual observation. And this is increasing probably, audio guides have only been around a few years for eg. And also that this partic. type of viewer is privileged to such an extent. It kind of makes me feel like it would if literary classics all went out of print and were replaced w/ heavily annotated versions.

the selection and placement of works often (ideally) intend to help viewers develop ways of seeing, a visual grammar. that's the other side of the coin here. museums, in my experience, DO privilege the work, and the accompanying text is mere enhancement.

lol we'll just have to agree to disagree i guess

i'm all for agreement

...you read the explanation, glance at the work confirming the point that the wall text was making and move on.

Or not getting the point that the wall text made. The people that do this probably wouldn't spend a lot of time looking at the work if there were no text anyway.

I'm in the camp of work first, text if I'm curious, and work again if the text mentioned something I didn't see the on the first look. If after a few wall text readings I conclude that the text is not useful I don't read it again, except for date, medium, etc. facts.

I suppose, another question is, how long do you typically spend in front of a painting?

(Yes, I know, the answer is "it varies" because personal taste comes so much into play. Some works really require only a 30 second glance - either because I simply don't like it, or because the message is plain - while I'm happy to spend 20 minutes in front of a work that really intrigues me, especially if the gallery is empty.)

But that brings up my other complaint which is only tangentially related, which is that one of the reason I get annoyed at people lingering in front of text, not art and clogging up the stream of people waiting behind them to see the *painting* (I tend to be obnoxious and skip past them to stand in front of the next picture, since they're obviously not interested in that, and just want to get to the text) ... erm, is that is not so much a function or poor curation or bad wall text as OVER SUBSCRIPTION. It is *especially* bad at the sort of "blockbuster" shows at major museums that you pay for a ticket which says enter at a certain time to try and "control crowd flow" but of course it hasn't controlled the crowd flow at all, just bunched it into packets of people who all entered together at quarter past and form moving roadblocks.

I suppose the answer to this is "don't go to blockbuster shows, or if you must, take a day off work and go on a weekday, otherwise stick to less popular regular collections)" but that's not exactly satisfactory, either. Different issue, I know. But in these kinds of situations, the earphone strollers become TOTAL menaces, as opposed to just annoying.

But then again, I am the sort of person that shouts at tourists who don't stand on the right of escalators so basically, when it comes to dealing with crowds of people, I am the devil.

lol i went to two museums and couldn't stop thinking about this thread the whole time

two museums yesterday*

xxp - I think i have a habit of not viewing exhibitions in the "proper" sequence for that reason.

omg i am stalking aa bronson in moma and i spotted him looking at general idea wall txt

are you gonna do a sophie calle tribute?

http://i386.photobucket.com/albums/oo305/lejospopo/a0ac4c9a.jpg

he is looking at the really gay stuff

lol he LOVES wall text

is that his partner (who also has a very long - maybe even longer - white beard)?

no its some nubile art-phag he has on his arm

torn abt whether or not i should risk losing him by going back to the sergej jensen painting he skipped

was gonna say you could just go stalk him at printed matter but he just retired as manager

yah lol im kindof over this

the wall text at the museums i went to this past weekend were almost entirely quotes from the artists themselves talking about their work - most of them were lame

hey joe btw im gonna try to make it to the blinky palermo retro at lacma i think if u wanna go

i do! (even though the broad museum blows.) when do you think you'll be out here?

i need a date w/ a calender tbh! december?

i will definitely be around until at least xmastime!

http://i386.photobucket.com/albums/oo305/lejospopo/fa78e3c3.jpg

readin all this walltxt @ the guggenheim

my friend barbara told me that LA is basically the most depressing place ever so im pretty much only going fir the blinky

why does that guy have his hand to his ear?

if you come next month there is also eva hesse at the hammer, iannis xenakis at moca PCD, an exhib on still life photography at the getty that looks kinda cool, not to mention the galleries in culver city and echo park and probably other places i don't even know about yet, so yr friend barbara can suck it (j/k but it's really not that depressing)

he's a time traveller.

xpost

omg i am stalking aa bronson in moma and i spotted him looking at general idea wall txt

hahaha.

This is about the most art savvy I get, but I'm amazed that I recognized AA from that picture without having read this post yet.

Also I can't not look at wall text, even when its artists whose work I know about already. It's a real problem.

On the other hand I typically find it informative, since I'm not particularly versed in most stuff I see anyways.

went to the met y.day and they really do their best not to talk about the sexy-time things on the greek vases

oh, and really looking forward to the wall text that accompanies the "how w1ne bec@me modern" show coming up at S F MøMA.

Guaranteed to be epic, that show is already killing us all.

waaaaaaaay xpost

wanting to do a parody show: How PBR Became Post-Modern

oh, and really looking forward to the wall text that accompanies the "how w1ne bec@me modern" show coming up at S F MøMA.

Guaranteed to be epic, that show is already killing us all.

waaaaaaaay xpost

― WARS OF ARMAGEDDON (Karaoke Version) (Sparkle Motion), Thursday, November 11, 2010 12:19 AM (3 weeks ago)

that show is really something - who designed the exhibition? were they on serious drugs at the time?

v importnat thread thanks for getting th trooth out there

i saw a bridget riley exhibition in the national gallery today that was a super awesome eg. of a show w/ a pretty high-concept premise that managed to get by w/o reams of shit explaining what they were doing.

what did you think of the wall text at SFMoMA?

i guess i didnt notice it except where they explained the oliver lutz thing which was super cool and needed explanation. i know that u agree but can i say that that wine thing was totally taking the piss.

you totally noticed it! You said it was good!

still it was pretty lol, when you asked me how I knew something, and I pointed to the wall text.

oh ok i guess i have a longer term memory about things that piss me off than things that are successful and good... the guggenheim was the worst possibly