Newark Museum
Our class visited the Newark Museum and was given a tour by
Pat Wessel. Throughout the tour she explained that the main goal of the Newark
Museum is to educate, saying that the museum’s job is to teach. The museum was
originally a family’s land turned into a museum. The collection first started
off as a donated collection. It expanded as more donations were made. Some
pieces are bought by selling some donations that don’t fit the museum’s
collections. For example, the museum does not have a lot of European art. If,
for example, they receive a 17th century European oil painting, they
may have to think about what collections they have that are missing works from
certain time periods so they can sell the European piece and fill in the gap.
They also receive works from buildings that are being taken down that have
murals (basically, more donations).
The audience of the institution is vast, ranging from
college students to business people on their breaks. However, there is a
special focus on the community and educating the youth. In their aim to
educate, a lot of the pieces they collect are functional, domestic pieces so
that kids can relate to the objects they are seeing.
The museum definitely focuses on history by creating special
exhibitions for different cultures and setting up works in chronological order.
For example, when we visited the African exhibits, one room consisted of very
old artifacts. That exhibition space connected to a contemporary African art
gallery, thus giving a historical perspective for a viewer of contemporary art.
It teaches history by the placement of certain artifacts and artworks in
chronological order. To make an exhibit more interactive, the museum makes sure
to use multi-media sources, new technology, to engage and teach the viewer.
Labels are a major component since the aim is to teach. Also, the variation in
time periods is so vast that labels are important. The 1st floor has
ancient art and contemporary galleries and the top floor have modern and
contemporary galleries. Considering the range, labels are vital to creating
coherent exhibitions. Also, creating environments using different mediums of
art (such as furniture with paintings) adds to the success of these
exhibitions.
Since there are so many different exhibits, there are
different curators that specialize in certain time periods of art that curate
and put together shows. Part of the curator’s job is to see what is missing
from a collection. Perhaps a type of functional artifact isn't in a specific
exhibit; for example, shoes. Maybe there is a whole gap of time not represented
in an exhibit. Those are some of the many things curators may look for. If a
curator does decided to buy a certain piece, they must propose it to the board
and convince them why it is important for the museum to have a certain item in
their collection.
They also have exhibition spaces for the sciences and site
local resources to teach kids about geography and other sciences. A major
component of the Newark museum is to educate the youth through various
workshops. They rely on volunteers for this type of education; Pat is actually
a volunteer. Tours and workshops, main components of educating, are done by
volunteers due to the lack of funding.
A lot of the funding is usually by the state, but those
funds have been cut. The hardest thing for the museum to fund every day is operational
costs. They rely heavily on donations by over 30 different foundations.
Foundations and volunteers, as well as people wanting to show their collections
(or donate them) provide substance for the museum to function.
Though the Newark Museum does have older works, it does seek
to give light to overlooked art makers of the past. For example, currently on
display is the exhibit “In Her Eyes: Women Behind and in Front of the Camera.”
This exhibit feature only female artists of many different cultures. In the past, art
history barely mentioned female artists as well as artists of different cultures.
This exhibition helps fill in that gap.
MoMA
As with the Newark Museum, the MoMA’s role is also to
educate. The audience of the institution is very vast. They have visitors
worldwide varying in all fields. Part of their job, as with many museums, is to
affirm notions of art history. This is reiterated in “Civilizing Rituals:
inside public art museums” by carol Duncan when she states “Their curatorial
staffs many share many of the views of their academic colleagues; but, the government-supported
and/or tax-free public institutions in which they work are under pressure to
present forms of knowledge that have recognizable meaning and value for a broader
community.”(Duncan 103) Our tour guide, Steven Wheeler, even stated that some
pieces need to stay up because people would get mad if it was taken down. He
was referring to Van Gogh’s Starry Night
in the 5th floor. The top two floors are dedicated to presenting
most of the key figures in modern art (in the mediums of painting and
sculpture). Those are basically the ones that keep visitors coming, as they
seek to see work that they have been taught to be important. Of course, the
museum does aim to do more than to just affirm academia’s map of art history.
The contemporary galleries are quite a sight. The new
exhibit “Applied Design” definitely gave the one time visitor an eye full. It
did not really affirm any notions of art history. In fact, I was surprised to
see most of that stuff in the MoMA. The exhibition basically showed different physical
manifestations of design concepts, whether they be functional or fantastical.
One side of the room focused on design and functionality in the home;
furniture. The other side highlighted scientific tools and design as well as
virtual worlds (aka video games)! It was an amazing exhibition and there was so
much to learn about the application of design in a vast range of fields, not
just in fine art.
Labeling is very important in both museums but it was
especially relevant in the “Applied Design” exhibit. Since the exhibited pieces
had an engineering and architectural basis, variation in labeling text and the
use of videos was key. The function of some objects had to be clearly explained
in a small box of text or visually demonstrated.
The curators are important for the same reason as in the
Newark Museum. They also may use works to sell and use the money to buy works
that fit a certain time period.
The MoMA has more contemporary art galleries, so they have a
bigger concern for showing new art than the Newark Museum. Also, since it is a
modern art gallery, of course they don’t exhibit any pieces before the modern
art period. Furthermore, the MoMA’s floors are divided by medium (Architecture
and Design I, Painting and Drawing I, etc.) as opposed to the Newark Museum,
who creates environments of a certain time period using different pieces
(furniture, painting, etc.).
Both museums made me think about notions of art history that
I have learned and accepted throughout my art education. It also made me think
about the possibilities of exhibiting pieces that don’t necessarily fit within
these notions. The exhibits at the MoMA really opened my eyes to those
possibilities. The Newark Museum demonstrated the idea of creating an
environment in a gallery, not just using it as a display area. The “Applied
Design” exhibit at the MoMA and the many exhibits at the Newark Museum use the
construction of an environment to display certain pieces.
In terms of art making, I have thought about the merging of disciplines
and fields of study to create functional and non-functional art pieces. The
MoMA had me thinking about the possibilities of creating functional artistic
pieces and having it fall into multiple categories. Science and design have had
amazing outcomes, as demonstrated in “Applied Design.”
From "Applied Design"
Newark Museum links:
MoMA links:
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