Curatorial Decisions

The Sunday Washington Post ran a special section on museums, and one very interesting article was on how curators decide what to display, and the rationale for the decisions.  The article gives some very good insight into what is exhibited and what remains in storage.  The article notes Washington DC curators have nearly 140 million items to select, yet typically only about 1% is seen at any given time.

Some of the rationale for not displaying include light sensitivity, while another reason is items are not of interest to the general public, but are for scholars. Online exhibitions of full collections are coming as well, so if you cant see the item in person, images on the internet may be available.

The Washington Post reports

Curators don’t have a lot of wiggle room in choosing how long such objects can be displayed.

When it comes to the most famous works, curators don’t have much leeway either. People who go to the Phillips Collection expect to see Jean Renoir’s “Luncheon of the Boating Party,” which shows rosy-cheeked revelers at a café on the Seine. One of the most famous pictures in Washington, it never goes into storage. The same goes for the Wright Brothers airplane, the Hope Diamond and the National Gallery of Art’s jewel-like paintings by Vermeer. (The National Gallery occasionally loans its Vermeers to other museums, which is why “The Girl With the Red Hat” isn’t up.)

And some items almost never get out of storage. The Freer and Sackler Galleries, which hold the Smithsonian’s collection of Asian art, own lots of pottery shards. They’re invaluable for scholars, but not much to look at.

Between “Luncheon of the Boating Party” and the rarely seen shards is a vast array of objects in the middle — items worth showing off but not musts. That’s where curators earn their keep.

Their decisions sometimes come down to what kind of conversations a work can have with other art around it. Dorothy Kosinski, director of the Phillips Collection, talks about creating “constellations” of art. Her metaphor captures a magical thing about museums: Artworks can take on new meaning because of their relationship with nearby works, just as three bright stars take on added meaning when we see them as Orion’s belt.

Source: The Washington Post