Something Thoughful

 Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.     

                                               A PROBLEM WITH ART GALLERIES 

                         

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold… by which I mean I have been in Europe enough to have visited many of the great art-galleries – the Louvre, the Prada, the Uffizi, the British National Gallery… and quite a few others. The all have their different protocols. I remember the severity in Amsterdam when I was censured  for taking photos of Van Gogh’s “Crows in a Cornfield”… so I waited until the busybody had moved on then went on photographing.  I did similar deviousness in the British National Gallery when I was told I could not shoot a Gainsborough.

So we come to Australia. We’ve popped a number of times over to Oz – Sydney of course but more often now to Melbourne because one of our daughters lives there now. We have just come back from a fortnight in Melbourne and in Adelaide (simply because we had never been to Adelaide before).

 

So here is a tale of two galleries.

In Melbourne the was an exhibition of French Impressionism from the late 19^th century. We eagerly paid to see this exhibition, which had been loaned by American galleries. In fact we booked for it in advance.

Oh Misery! Yes the paintings were wonderful. All  those works by Corot, Millet, Monet, Boudin, Sisley, Van Gough, Degas and others; but one had to push and jostle through the crowd. The fact was that there were so many people that one could barely stop to admire a painting before one was pushed along. It seemed apparent that the gallery had been grossly over-booked. Without being a snob, I believe that only a limited number of people should have been booked for each viewing… say, two hours for each group. One old man sat down in the midst of the crowd and said, lugubriously, but truthfully “This is not the way to see art.” To make matters worse, the whole time we were in the gallery there was a distressed woman who was pushing a pram with an even more distressed baby in it. The baby was not merely whimpering but was [literally] howling and screaming… for the whole hour-plus that we were in the gallery. I doubt if either mother or baby was enjoying the art work, but, being polite, nobody said that the baby should be put out.  Yes, great paintings but not a great experience.

 

There were no such problems when we, later, were in Adelaide  [very nice and tidy city-centre with many malls and green spaces]. Going to Adelaide’s main art-gallery there were no crowds because no special exhibition was on. Much space was given to selections of colonial 19^th century Australian landscapes and portraits, and much space of Aboriginal works, but as much space was given to classic work from Europe, mainly from the 17^th and 18^th centuries. But one tiny matter did irk me. In two of the galleries, rather than having under  each painting the name of the painter and the name of the painting, title and name were all placed together at the end of their two galleries. One had to puzzle out which painting was which.

I suppose all I have said here is trivial, but small things can ruin a viewing.