by Jon Lackman | 27 June 2006 | Museums
According to the Lincoln [Nebraska] Journal Star, in the newly reinstalled European galleries at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, “Paintings share wall space with clocks. Silverwork and sculptures are on pedestals strategically placed in the same room with the paintings. Complimentary works on paper are in the nearby hallway. All of the works in each room were made in approximately the same place at approximately the same time … ‘It is a new museum concept,’ [director Marc] Wilson said … ‘It grows out of this idea that I had that people weren’t getting enough out of it. We were splitting things off according to an 18th century classification system, usually by medium or something like that, and it wasn’t functioning well for the ordinary visitor. It might work well for the specialist who invented that classification system, but not for anybody else.’ … ‘Too many museums try to teach art history,’ Wilson said. ‘That I don’t think is the way you start. It could be a consequence later on, but art history is basically a tool. ‘What I really wanted was a dynamic of presentation that includes architecture, the presentation of the art physically, all the interpretives devices — the labels, the panels, the brochures, the audio guide, the computer station, all of that — thought out very thoroughly to communicate not art history, but the collection as it is. What emerges is a much more meaningful structure based on the collection itself.’”
