Whose voice in the gallery?
The problem with living outside London and being an avid museum-goer, is that I rarely visit museums’ permanent galleries these days. With so much to see and do in the sector, my London visits tend to be focused on special exhibitions or at least a newly opened display of a permanent collection. There was a silver lining, therefore, to finding that Lichtenstein at Tate Modern was sold out on Saturday, as it caused my friends and I to wander into the Poetry and Dream displays.
Besides showing me that I should go to the Tate Modern more often, this very enjoyable set of rooms got me thinking about the different voices that we look for in gallery interpretation. Permanent displays in particular tend to be couched in a generic institutional voice, which informs visitors of a single – you might easily think definitive – lesson to be learnt from the objects discussed. I think there is an important role for this, in making gallery narratives clear and concise, as well as keeping parity across a large and disparate collection. Many visitors want to be told how to see, and what they should be learning from a display.
However, a single interpretive voice in displays, not only diminishes the role of the curator – exhibitions are one of the only academic fields which are not deliberately authored, are they not? – but can also obscure the breadth of responses associated with an object. Museums have particularly begun to adopt more disparate and explicit voices when it comes to items collected as part of Britain’s colonial history. This allows more sensitive narratives to be told. Modern and contemporary art displays pose a different set of concerns, as visitors might want a clear explanation of why a school is important and how they should approach what is often quite immediately inaccessible work. But, I think it is also crucial to make clear that personal response to art is equally important, that modern art can give an emotional response without formal recognition of a subject, that it is okay not to ‘understand’ something.
The Poetry and Dream displays manage these concerns particularly well I thought. Firstly, the introduction panel to each room is explicitly authored by a named curator, making the processes and individuals in the museum more obvious. Secondly, the individual object labels are supplemented by a series of short texts entitled ‘The Bigger Picture.’ These give a brief response to a particular piece from a wide range of authors, from novelists and academics, to Tate gallery assistants and community participants. I was particularly struck by Marcus du Sautoy’s response to an Alexander Calder mobile – comparing it to an equation – and A. S. Byatt’s description of a Stanley Spencer painting – making me see a spiritual depth in a style of painting that I have always found heavy and awkward.
These are small voices amongst a flood of information, which may well drown out variety for many visitors. But I think these voices are shouting in the right direction.