In Search of Aesthetic Experience: Are Museums Getting in the Way?

Author(s): Susan Myers Source: Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Summer, 1988), pp. 102-108 Published by: University of Illinois Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3333127 Accessed: 15/01/2010 16:42
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there were space here there would be in addition something from his piece on the related subject of "soft" news, which seems to be a response of the medium to newly perceived mental flabbiness both in politics and in the process of education. Arlen thinks that the age of hard news is in fact behind us-it belonged with the reportage of the Vietnamese War and the mindset of the past so much concerned with the objective facts of social life. But soft news becomes for him a kind of proof of Tocqueville's analysis of democracy, a manifestation of the idea that individualism has lost its political roots or traded them in for a blank, benign, and false kind of psychology. Nothing really should upset the regnant idea-feeling-that citizens and viewers (these terms are now synonyms) deserve to see the screen projecting a certain view of the world. It is a world completely nonthreatening, in which Dan Rather only occasionally goes to battle with a politician or a president: for the most part to see the news in action is to see, Arlen suggests, a perception of progress and reasonableness and of happy endings, which accords well with current notions of individual emotional rights, but badly with reality. This is one of the few good books we have on the twin subjects of the meaning of programming and the aims of the industry. It couldn't come with a higher recommendation-although any reader will differ on its specifics. Arlen is good, but he is also a kind of worn-down liberal mind; an intellectual not really in control of the beast he sees needs riding. But maybe that is the right persona to create. Ronald Berman University of California, San Diego In Search of Aesthetic Experience: Are Museums Getting in the Way? Among the many tasks assigned to the art museum, one that has been frequently mentioned in recent literature would have art museums accept a role in the field of aesthetic education as a major responsibility. Thus Sherman Lee said that aesthetic education is "a unique and all-important activity for an art museum."' Albert William Levi suggests that besides being a "warehouse" and a "showcase," the museum is an "indispensable instrument in the great task of aesthetic education."2 However, in the name of educating the public, many museums may be inhibiting rather than encouraging visitors' aesthetic experiences. If aesthetic education is a major purpose of the art museum, what can the museum staff do to insure the likelihood of accomplishing this goal? Nelson Goodmann asserts that "unless the museum ... finds ways of inculcating the ability to see and of aiding and abetting the exercise of that ability, the other functions of the museum [collecting and preserving] will be pointless and its works as dormant as books in an unreadable language or in locked bindings."3 He continues that the "museum cannot instantly supply the needed experience and competence [to see and understand art objects] but must find ways of fostering their acquisition."4 Harold Osborne points toward educational concerns when he says that aesthetic

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awareness or appreciation "is a skill which needs to be cultivated and Patterson Williams claims that the goal of museum education is to bridge the gap between what she calls the "elite" and the average museum visitor. The "elite" group consists of a small number of persons, including individuals like Sherman Lee and Leo Steinberg, who have devoted their entire lives to the study of art and art objects.6 While average museum visitors may be well educated, the vast majority of them are not well educated in art. Enter the museum educator, whose task it is to consider the museum visitor and develop strategies for enriching the visitor's experience with the museum's collections. Williams suggests that the focus of the museum educator's job differs from that, say, of an art educator in a school setting: "Educational experts [in museums] need to understand and facilitate the particular kind of learning that is unique to museums-object-centered learning."7 The very element that makes the museum an ideal location for aesthetic experience is the presence of the art object, the real thing, not a reproduction. Museum educators must have an object-centered approach to education in order best to utilize the museum environment. If aesthetic education is one of the main purposes of museum education, what philosophical questions should museum professionals, mainly educators, concern themselves with in order to do their jobs effectively? These pages will examine a major philosophical issue that all museum educators should consider in carrying out their responsibilities: the autonomous (internal) versus the heteronomous (external) qualities of the art object. This question has interested philosophers for centuries. H. Gene Blocker, who examines the autonomy/heteronomy problem as the theme of his book, says that it "has nothing to do with the way works of art are produced or appreciated. It arises directly out of the ways in which we think of works of art and the terminology we use to express ourselves."8 Since museum educators use many terms about the artworks in their museums-in tours, lectures, handouts, and labels-and must structure their thinking about art before hoping to educate the public, they should find it pertinent to reflect on the autonomy/heteronomy question. I will suggest situations in which this problem may become important and use examples from my experience as a museum educator that illustrate the problem in action. Robert Miihlberger says that "art should be experienced, not explained, but... sometimes the right choice of words will help bring someone else to that experience."9 It is specifically the right choice of words that I would like to consider in framing an approach to museum education. Many of us have witnessed a scenario similar to the following: A gallery guide stands in front of a Picasso still life and says, "This work was painted by the famous Spanish artist Pablo Picasso who lived most of his life in France. Picasso was one of the founders of Cubism and is well known for his monumental work entitled Guernica." (The guide moves on to the next painting.) While the information provided was correct, its relevance may be questioned. It should be noted that the viewers had the opportunity to

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examine an original work-not Guernica-and were given information about the artist that was not particularly relevant to their experience with that particular art object. Goodman presents two opposing policies that one might adopt given the situation of a viewer confronting a work of art. He suggests that we might "show a work properly and get out of the way" or "make available all sorts of assistance,"10 such as labels, talks, films, interesting juxtapositions of objects, and so forth. Goodman is essentially addressing the autonomy/heteronomy problem. Should museum professionals let the object speak for itself (autonomous), or should they provide all sorts of external (heteronomous) information for the viewer? I would like to propose that museum educators choose neither extreme, but find an appropriate solution somwhere in the middle. Because museums have objects available for first-hand viewing and appreciation, some weight must be given to the autonomous view of art objects. We are back to the right choice of words again. I do not intend to propose there is a formula museum educators can use to determine what words are most appropriate to use. However, I would like my colleagues to consider whether or not some words they use are too concerned with heteronomous qualities to be appropriate for the gallery setting. Osborne says that "the value of discursive and analytical knowledge about any work of art lies only in its capacity to facilitate our perception of the work." 1 Osborne's words are especially applicable to the setting of an art object in a gallery. There are plenty of other occasions for sharing fascinating art-historical tidbits with museum visitors; slide lectures in an auditorium, exhibition catalogues, and critical reviews of exhibitions are more appropriate opportunities for imparting information that is not pertinent to enriching the viewer's immediate perception of an art object. The timing of what we say is just as important as the content. Osborne comments, "Too often one can see innocent members of the public traversing the rooms of a gallery with machines glued to their ears pouring out art-historical information about a work which they ought rather to be seeing." 2 Have we created a museum public that thinks it must know something in order to begin looking at an exhibition? I would suggest museum visitors must (1) know how to look at art objects and (2) know how to get the information that will contribute to a greater understanding of art objects. At the risk of sounding like a foe of art history, I must say that we have disempowered our audiences if we have led them to believe that they need facts in order best to experience art objects. We should be spending more time teaching visitors how to learn from the objects we display rather than conditioning them to read or listen in the galleries. In the interest of advancing the aesthetic awareness of our visitors, we must provide the ways and the means toward attaining aesthetic experience. In training the docents at our museum, I sensitize them to object orientation early on. The first presentation of their nine-month training course concentrates on learning how to look. This presentation is a combination slide lecture and gallery talk focusing on formal and expressive qualities of art objects that can be discerned through looking. The docents' first

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assignment is to choose one object in the collection they are not familiar with. After at least a half-hour's observation they are to write an informal paper about the work they have chosen. The point is to encourage the docents to exercise their skills of observation and to discover just how much can be learned about an object without depending on an art-historical text or art historian. This point was beautifully illustrated in one docent trainee's paper a couple of years ago. This docent had no prior art training (as many do not). I was astounded to read the summary of her paper about a Matisse still life in our collection (fig. 1). She concluded that

Fig. 1. Henri Matisse (French, 1869-1954), Roses Safrano et Cage de Perruches (Yellow Roses with Cage of Parakeets), 1924. Oil on canvas, 233/4x 283/4in. Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio: Gift of Ferdinand Howald, 31.66. Reproduced with permission.

"this artist seems to be very interested in color and pattern." How absolutely succinct and accurate her observation was. How nicely she came to the conclusion on her own rather than by having read the information or been told by a curator or another docent. That discovery about Matisse will stay with her a long while. My hope is that docents will encourage visitors to make discoveries like this on their own. The initial docent assignment is followed up by a research assignment. Each docent is required to use a variety of sources to follow up her observations: general art history texts, monographs on the artist, exhibition catalogues, and the museum's documentary files. To wrap up their obser-

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vations and research, the docents are required to make an oral presentation to their fellow trainees in order to share not only what they learned by looking, but also whatever other information they may have gained in their research that will enrich understanding of the object. I caution them to select carefully the research information they share, advising them to choose information that enriches our experience with that object. For instance, if the docent, while discussing a still life that was not a Fauve work, were to impart the information that Matisse had experimented with Fauvism, I would question the appropriateness of such a comment. I would not question the inclusion of such information in a slide lecture about the early work of Matisse or in front of another painting that was a Fauve work. To give an example of an instance where considerable art-historical background is essential to an understanding of an object, I use a Dutch genre painting from our collection (fig. 2). The work has much rich iconography that cannot be apprehended by a typical twentieth-century viewer. While the uninitiated viewer can certainly appreciate the sensual qualities of the painting, knowing something about the vanitas theme of the work can only add to the enjoyment and understanding of the painting. I would counsel a docent to begin with the object and what can be discerned by looking before launching into a complicated iconographical interpretation. We should be encouraging visitors to trust their own powers of observation in discovering the delights the objects in our collections have to offer. Once they experience delight, visitors will be much more inclined to pursue the acquisition of knowledge that can enrich delight. My belief that the museum visitor's attention should be drawn to the object by all educational efforts in the galleries poses a real challenge to me. Because I have knowledge that is (by my own standards) perhaps irrelevant or inappropriate to offer in a gallery setting, I find that I am continually on guard when discussing art objects in the galleries to remain true to my own view. I find myself sometimes blurting out somewhat "inappropriate" biographical information during a tour. In that instance I may suggest that the viewers decide for themselve whether the information I have offered enriches their understanding and enjoyment of the work. But by and large my efforts are directed at an object-centered approach to gallery talk. To come back to the autonomy/heteronomy problem, I encourage all museum educators to evaluate the kind of information we provide to museum visitors. Does the information relate to what is in the work of art, or is it so far removed from the art object that it distracts from a potential aesthetic experience? Does it matter if, hypothetically speaking, the Dutch genre painter married five times and probably had blond hair? Or are these tidbits best left out of gallery talk and put into the documentary file or a biography of the artist? The reader can probably guess how I would answer, but I challenge each museum educator to come up with his or her own reply to questions like these. Museum educators should consider the autonomy/heteronomy problem when training and evaluating docents, preparing gallery handouts, writing labels, and designing installations and

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Fig. 2.

Caspar Netscher (Dutch, 1639-1684), A Lady with a Parrot and a Gentleman with a Monkey, 1664. Oil on copper, 13 13/16 x 11 1/8 in. Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio: Museum purchase, Derby Fund, 78.18. Reproduced with permission.

text panels. They should also set an example when discussing art objects in the galleries by attending to the object first. If we believe that one of the important roles of the museum lies in the area of aesthetic education, then we should be concerned with how our choice of language and approach toward education advances this aim. Susan Myers Columbus Museum of Art

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1. Sherman E. Lee, Art Museums and Education: Past, Present, East and West (New York: George Braziller, 1983), p. 64. 2. Albert William Levi, "The Museum as Agency of Culture," Journal of Aesthetic Education 19, no. 2 (1985): 40. 3. Nelson Goodman, "The End of the Museum?" Journal of Aesthetic Education, op. cit., p. 56. 4. Ibid., p. 57. 5. Harold Osborne, "Museums and Their Functions," Journal of Aesthetic Education, op. cit., p. 45. 6. Patterson Williams, "Educational Excellence in Art Museums: An Agenda for Reform," Journal of Aesthetic Education, op. cit., p. 107. 7. Ibid., p. 117. 8. H. Gene Blocker, Philosophy of Art (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1979), p. 22. 9. Richard Miihlberger, "After Art History, What? A Personal View of the Shaping of Art Museum Education," Journal of Aesthetic Education, op. cit., p. 98. 10. Goodman, "The End of the Museum?" pp. 58-59. 11. Osborne, "Museums and Their Functions," p. 51. 12. Ibid., p. 46.

The Troubled Romance of Expression I believe that recent progressive advances in the teaching of reading and writing have unknowingly taken up the Romantic project with expression. While pretending neither to produce nor study art in any direct manner, a number of teachers and students are participating in what I want to term a Romantic aesthetic of experience, of the sort captured by Wordsworth's phrase "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." This aesthetic creates an ideological link between art and education which dates back to Rousseau and the cultural upheaval that arose toward the end of the eighteenth century. In this way, teacher and student are being initiated into a manner of thinking about themselves and the world that recalls the manner of Romanticism which has dominated the arts since the nineteenth century.1 However, in exploring this association in my own research and teaching, I have also come to appreciate the fact that Romanticism is by no means the natural ally of public education. In my work with this "new" movement, I have repeatedly come up against what appears to be an inherent contradiction between these two dominant trends, between the Romantic urge to self-expression and what might be termed the Arnoldian hope of forming the student's soul. This difference in intention and temperament between these dominant notions of art and education often frustrates the best efforts of those educators drawn to Romanticism, even as their challenge to the academic mainstream isolates them in the schools. In the development of a Romantic aesthetic, the particular tug for the teacher is between encouraging expressions of self and educating the identity that
pops up. The example I wish to present here of a troubling art, of a fierce-

ly Romantic paradox, in the neighborhood school is one of first-grade students making the page over in their own image-in a struggle with expres-