Is Cooper Hewitt really the museum of the future?(Atlantic Monthly). Lets hope not. The recent media hubbub after the museums $91 million!!! makeover, makes it a must see - but you tell me? For the $18pp admission, I could visit several house museums or the Studio Museum (see below) 3 times. The 1903 Carnegie Mansion is still a treat - and its endless rooms - each with a distinctive show & tell - expansively engaging. Ive never quite nailed what I hate about what I regard as the cult of the new and the now. Novelty for its own sake? Who cares! An art museum is not a fashion runway. Everything is new until you experience it, and new every time your understanding of it evolves. - including all of world literature and art. Disclosure: I love art, object and stuff. I hate bloviating know-it-alls and designers mediating, moderating and manipulating my experience of art. I like good interpretation and succinctly compelling labels. I like interpretive videos (in moderation). I can even point to some interactives Ive liked - though they are rare. I appreciate why designers and techies and some museum professionals would love this - its their full-employment act. But why should visitors care? (Disclosure - the place was mobbed). There is too much a sense of being influenced by conceptual and contemporary art, science museums and the simplistic assumption that to be audience-centered we somehow need to create the illusion that the visitor is shaping their own experience. Bah humbug. That said - there are some cool things and a few engaging new ideas here. But the oldest and best idea in museology - that things of imagination, wonder, skill, and beauty are worth reverencing - MIA. Id give it C+ (click pic for details)
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 01:06:49 +0000
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