Who Is Responsible for Keeping Art Safe in Museums
A immature Taiwanese boy caused extensive harm to a valuable 17th century painting by Paolo Porpora after he accidentally tripped and put his hand through it while trying to break his fall.
The incident highlights an ongoing challenge faced past museums and galleries – keeping works of art accessible to the public, and protecting them at the same time. Curators and conservators are just too well aware of the risks, which can exist deliberate, incidental or, as in this example, adventitious. So what can nosotros larn from this and what could be done differently?
Deliberate damage is probably the most hard to manage, as was the example with the Leonardo da Vinci cartoon damaged past gunshot in the National Gallery in London in 1987 despite the painting beingness protected by a laminated plate-drinking glass screen.
Incidental harm is easier to anticipate, in that it often results from a visitor's innate curiosity about the surface of a material. It can exist managed through the use of signage, gallery attendants, by developing the visitors' understanding of the harm that can be caused, or the use of a concrete barrier. Gallery attendants are able to provide a discreet and unobtrusive service that targets just those visitors who nowadays a risk.
However, cutbacks in funding have meant that even when they are employed they oftentimes take to oversee more than than one gallery, making it impossible to supervise visitor behaviour.
When to bear on
The Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle provides an opportunity for the visitor to handle different materials and artefacts in order to provide a more than sensory experience alongside an understanding of their fragility. However non all visitors engage with the education center and many who practise quickly forget the lessons learned once in the galleries.
An additional confusion has been introduced through interactive contemporary artworks, such as Carsten Höller'due south, that encourage visitor engagement. It can be all too piece of cake for the visitor to so assume that "up close and personal" is acceptable behaviour with all works of art.
Surface harm may not be immediately apparent or obvious but as thousands of futurity visitors follow the same instinctive urge to affect, it builds up cumulatively resulting in irreversible impairment to the beautiful surface patina of materials such as bronze. Although the surface of a painting does not offer quite the same tactile allure, they also can suffer similar consequences.
I worked at the National Museum of Wales when it opened its new Centre Court in 1993. At the fourth dimension it was determined to provide as much physical access to the artworks equally possible, every bit a event in that location were no barriers in front of whatever of the paintings. Within a week the huge Michael Andrews painting – The Cathedral, The Southern Faces/Uluru (Ayers Rock) – had to be cordoned off as the result of the impairment caused by the many visiting children who had trailed their curious fingers across its unprotected surface.
Enough rope
Many museums would prefer not to use barriers only considering they spoil the look of a gallery. In the by some resorted to technology in the hope of managing the adventure without disrupting the gallery aesthetics. Museums such equally the Stederlijk Museum in Amsterdam used alarms triggered past lasers to alarm visitors to their proximity to a painting. It is peradventure not surprising that the trade-off between aesthetics and noise has not been taken upwards universally.
The apply of rope barriers is commonplace merely due to their flexibility, a visitor can still get quite close to a painting either deliberately or inadvertently. It would seem that it was in recognition of that particular take a chance that staff in Taipei decided to place a raised platform betwixt the barrier and the painting equally a reminder to the visitors should they become too close. It was unfortunate that it was this very platform that contributed to the incident.
My question is why this boy was wandering around plain unsupervised in such an aimless fashion with little apparent spatial awareness and with what appears to be a drink in his hand. Had the contents of the drink also gone over the painting the damage would accept been even greater.
The kids are non all right
In 2014, art critic Ivan Hewett suggested children be banned from galleries after a young girl was allowed to climb on a Donald Judd sculpture at the Tate Modern. Sociologist Tiffany Jenkins talks about museums turning into playgrounds, and it is hard to disagree.
We have all been to museums, peculiarly on rainy holidays, where children are allowed to charge around making a huge amount of dissonance with little or no interest in the collections other than as obstacles effectually which to play. This is always a disappointment on so many levels: start because the children are missing an invaluable opportunity to learn near themselves and the world in which they live, only likewise because their behaviour prevents everyone enjoying the collections that they accept travelled to visit.
Many museums are complicit in this development every bit they focus on using their collections to entertain children rather than excite their curiosity in the hope of cartoon in the visitor numbers that are essential to their funding and survival. Personally, I have no problem with children in museums for the right reasons and have never forgotten the huge blue whale and dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum that triggered a life-long love of natural history.
Maybe the electric current problem is that fewer people seem to appreciate the value of proper behaviour or care almost its touch on others. Maybe the incident in Taipei might have been avoided if the immature person involved had been taken around the show past an developed in order to appoint with the creative genius that was Leonardo da Vinci.
Source: https://theconversation.com/what-museums-must-do-to-ensure-art-is-protected-46646