Video Review 5-4-19

This week I watched three videos on the process of art museum curation: The Lowdown on Lowbrow: West Coast Pop Art; BBC Culture Show: Tate Modern Is 10! (Part 5); and An Acquiring Mind: Philippe de Montebello and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The first video I watched, The Lowdown on Lowbrow: West Coast Pop Art, focused on the art genre of “lowbrow” art (or “surrealist pop art”). From the video, I learned that the term “lowbrow” refers to a person that is considered uncultivated and lacking in taste, thus, lowbrow art is considered to be the same. There is a struggle between lowbrow art and what lowbrow artists describe as “highbrow” art, which is the artworks that have been celebrated in art history, as well as artworks that are featured in art museums today. Since lowbrow artists could not get accepted into art museums, they decided to create their own exhibits and display their work to anyone who was interested in it. Lowbrow art is very approachable because it is mostly narrative art which often features popular icons like famous actors and movie characters. The lowbrow movement considers female artists as equals to male artists, which is another aspect of the lowbrow movement that is appealing to regular people. The advent of the internet brought international interest to the lowbrow movement and now, some lowbrow art can be as expensive as highbrow art.

BBC Culture Show: Tate Modern Is 10! (Part 5) taught me that any time an exhibit is curated, it is designed with a certain perspective on history, since it is impossible to present every perspective on history at the same time. Curators have to choose how they tell a story with their artworks, and they often will display artworks together in a way that creates an additional meaning, due to how they are juxtaposed.

An Acquiring Mind: Philippe de Montebello and The Metropolitan Museum of Art taught me that “knowledge is the engine that makes museums work,” (Philippe de Montebello), because the curators have to know the background and meaning of an artwork before they can meaningfully create an exhibit. I also learned that it is impossible for any one person to know the whole history of art from every culture, in every time period, which makes me more relieved because of how much I still have to learn! I also learned that before an artwork gets accepted to be displayed in an exhibit, it goes through a rigorous vetting process, starting with persuading the director why the piece should be included. The video also taught me that great curators demand great quality artworks, and that a curator’s expertise is crucial to a museum functioning properly. Preserving the artworks is the primary function of a museum, which is why there is so much care and expertise needed when it comes to restoring them. Often, it is best not to restore an artwork at all, since restoration attempts can actually change or even damage the artwork. All art curators design their exhibit around a theme, and it takes hard work and dedication to make exhibits happen.

The first video, The Lowdown on Lowbrow: West Coast Pop Art, relates to the creation of my exhibit in that my exhibit’s theme is protest, and the lowbrow art movement began as a protest against highbrow art museums; I am considering including lowbrow art in my exhibit for this very reason. BBC Culture Show: Tate Modern Is 10! (Part 5) relates to my exhibit because the theme of protest will create additional meanings as I juxtapose low art (I still have to choose one) with Picasso’s Guernica, (1937), which is revered as highbrow art; not only will the juxtaposition of lowbrow and highbrow art be surprising, it will challenge the viewer’s definition of art—and hopefully open their mind to lowbrow art. An Acquiring Mind: Philippe de Montebello and The Metropolitan Museum of Art is relevant to my exhibit because it focuses on how important the knowledge of the artwork is in order to create a meaningful exhibit. Also, the video emphasizes that all curators create exhibits based around a theme, which is exactly what I will be doing.

I thought that each video was meaningful and they all taught me something about an area of art that I did not previously know: the value of lowbrow art, how juxtaposition is used in exhibits, and how preserving artworks is the primary function of an art museum. Each of the videos helped me to understand an aspect of art curation that informed my process of creating my art exhibit, especially by teaching me that all art curators—even lowbrow art curators—design their exhibits around a central theme.

Until next time!

    

References

Films Media Group. (2006). The lowdown on lowbrow: West coast pop art. [Video file]. Retrieved May 4, 2019, from https://digital.films.com/PortalPlaylists.aspx?wID=102245&xtid=41276

BBC culture show: tate modern is 10! (part 5). [Video file]. Retrieved May 4, 2019 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dz_6tT9n0E&t=0s&list=PLP1fsP8M6plGuVQ4fml-3nnGI-bTRRceY&index=58

An acquiring mind: philippe de montebello and the metropolitan museum of art. [Video file]. Retrieved May 4, 2019 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7uxxS2diTE