Just look at the pretty pictures.

A reviewer for the Independent has a problem. The Byzantium exposition in the Royal Academy shows a lot of flashy relics, but little substance on the side. According to him, the exhibition wows the senses, but the opportunity to "address our difficulties about the subject matter" is lost. Granted, he's pretty vague there in actually laying out what he means by that, and the Royal Academy is a bit far for the time being, do just drop by and have a look, but on a hunch, I would say that the author is pointing out an item of debate, quite common in today's museums.

To what extent should art exhibits have interpretive texts explaining their context to us? At first, the answer seems obvious: it's all about context, right? In the end, we do not understand the objects in museums, unless we know the context in which they were used and produced, if we don't know what preceded and followed them. As Lowenthal points out in "The Past is a Foreign Country", relics revitalize history and re-make into memory. This is why museums are so effective tools of education. Why would we not want as much context as possible?

Well, the issue gets a little murkier in the case of art museums. A case could be made, that what art museums really are interested in, is not conveying the history of the movements, the context of the paintings and the story of their production, but the timeless aesthetic qualities that transcend history and memory and make themselves apparent without any background knowledge, without any context. In simpler terms: it's the 'wow-factor'. The art museums could say: if you want context, take an art history class, we are interested in conveying the full range of the aesthetic experience.

This is why art galleries and even art museums presenting artworks hundreds of years old, are almost invariably presented in ubiquitious white spaces. Rarely are 16th century portraits hung on replicas of 16th century mansions, complete with quills, candles, beds and dinner trays (though there are exceptions to that). The idea is to draw attention to the art, not to dilute it with clutter. The information the art can give us of the past, is often secondary to the emotion it evokes in the viewer there and then.

Of course, this is but one interpretation, and others (whom I happen to agree with), would say that the intent of the artwork is lost, if one can not appreciate the context in which it was made. Most of Renaissance art requires an intricate knowledge of both the Bible and of the Antique, something quite well understood by the people appreciating art back in the 16th century, but somewhat more obscure for today's generations. While it is possible to appreciate the mastery of the composition, the emotions conveyed through the characters, many of yesteryear's paintings would ultimately remain incomprehensible, or at least greatly diminished without the contextualizing texts and audio material.

And one final point: By being keepers of heritage, museums have a certain responsibility to provide the context, even if they do not consider it their mission. By being in posession of a unique piece of cultural heritage and by committing to educating the public, a museum takes on the responsibility of presenting the contextual information in an easily accessible way, because no one else can do it. One can write art history books, or produce documentary films, or write fiction, but the bottom line is, that the museum will be the only one in posession of the actual object, and thus has the monopoly on the history-turning-memory process that Lowenthal describes in his book. Thus the museum is not entitled to simply cutting out the history.

And in the end, if all you want from a museum is the art and not the history, then no-one is obliging you to read.

PS. this post may have been influenced more by the appalling lack of context in the Latvian National Art museum, than the Royal Academy show, but if I understand the reviewer correctly, then the latter seems to be suffering from a similar problem.