viewing: an active verb when in museums

In Svetlana Alpers’ article titled “The Museum as a Way of Seeing” she observes the interesting feeling that we all have experienced when in a museum. This is a strange occurrence and I will talk about my take on this phenomenon.
I have been to my fair share of museums and they all have different effects based on a few different components. The first would be the content of the museum. The effect of the museum will be greater if it has something interesting to the specific person who is going. For example I, myself, favor historical museums (particularly American history) so obviously a museum like that will get me more excited than an art museum. I have been to most of the important sites of the revolution and civil war, subjects that I love most of all in American history. The experience started far before we got to the museum. I was very excited to go and see all old battle fields and the artifacts that have been found and displayed. When I got there my eyes were opened and ready to see all these things and to hear about each one of them from a museum worker. However the experience goes both ways, I remember I went to the glass museum and I had been dreading it for the whole day. These effects the way people perceive museums, even if the museum is arranged nicely and has a lot of information about the objects or in my case the works of art, the observer will still come away with a negative impression because the subject of the museum was not interesting to that individual.
The next two factors of perception of a museum I have already mentioned, arrangement and information. These are not as important as the focus of the museum but they still have the ability of changing a good experience at a museum in to a bland and forgettable day trip. Arrangement of the items in a museum will get the viewers attention or not. Also the question of “how much information?” is crucial to the success of the museum in the spectator’s eyes.

Spiral Jetty

There have been many questions surrounding the famous Spiral Jetty that resides in The Great Salt Lake in Utah. Because it is art and it lives in the lake does that make the Great Salt Lake a museum or did the artist intend for Spiral Jetty to eventually erode to show some artistic concept? Well, I think that Spiral Jetty is not a museum. This is because if the artist wanted it to be preserved he would have left some writing behind that said so and that we should try to keep it from disappearing. Also he would have put it in a better and less corrosive place. The Great Salt Lake is a very harsh environment for anything really, so my conclusion has to be that the artist meant for the work to represent some type of transcending truth about the temporary nature of life.
Of course the argument that Spiral Jetty is not a museum raises the question of “what about national parks?”. Believe it or not there is a very simple answer to this. Spiral Jetty was man made by an artist with a specific reason in mind when he created the design. However National Parks were created naturally over millions of years and because they cannot be moved they have to be preserved. Also there is no one who can say that they were created for a particular reason to represent something therefore we must take care of them for future generations.

testing

testing....one two three? let's hope this works