But curators must get creative with how they present, if what they present, in plastic terms, may not excite. I interviewed him at an American embassy event in Ljubljana, Slovenia, when he explained that it's curatorially easy to have a blockbuster of Impressionist paintings or to stick a Vermeer on the wall and draw the crowds. One of them is Brent Glass, until recently the director of the Smithsonian Museum of American History. ![]() So what do you as a curator do when the material in your collection is more interesting than spectacular? To find out, I spoke to several prominent names in the field. American museumgoers are not as interested in an enlightening, didactic exhibition with important, if not particularly visually striking or much-hyped objects, on display for which they really need to read all the wall copy, use the audio guide and perhaps even buy the thick catalog in order to get the most out of the carefully curated, years-in-the-making exhibition. All those other paintings, not to mention the little pop-up exhibit of Tiepolo drawings or what have you, usually get short shrift. But there are many theatergoers who see "Hamlet" in order to wait for the lines they already know and will recognize (“To be or not to be! Woo hoo!”). First off, let it be said that such a small percentage of the general public goes to museums or Shakespeare plays, that we must doff our hats to them for making the effort. It requires a different, more leisurely mindset to wander without a primary target, to give yourself the breathing room to read all the wall copy and hand yourself over to the well-meaning curators.Īmericans in particular - although I’ve noticed this with foreign audiences, too - tend to treat seeing art like attending Shakespeare plays. I’d rather travel on an art historical pilgrimage to Volterra, Italy, to see Rosso Fiorentino’s "Deposition" or an excursion beyond the center of Dijon, France, into the psychiatric hospital to admire Claus Sluter’s "Well of Moses" than spend hours in a museum seeing dozens of works that I may not remember. To be fair, although I’m a professor of art history, I’m a bit like this, too. While a small, passionate percentage of museum visitors are there to learn and will plunge deeply and broadly into a collection, most aim for the “big guns.” They want to say that they saw Whistler’s mother or the Mona Lisa, maybe grab a quick selfie in front of it (if the museum guards are looking the other way and they remember to turn off the flash) and then head for the cafeteria. We want to see an artwork, even just one focal work, that has been hyped, that we’ve heard about, that dazzles. In that film, Rowan Atkinson’s bumbling museum guard is mistaken for a famous Whistler scholar and left alone with the wildly expensive, high-visibility artwork that is the focal point of a garish, nouveau riche museum: Whistler’s "Portrait of the Artist’s Mother." The results, involving inadvisable sneezing and subsequent amateur conservation attempts, are funny, but the movie is biting and right on the money - smarter than it looks. The film used many of the ideas and skits from the original television series.If the movie "Bean" has taught us anything (and what hasn’t it taught us really?), it’s that American museums and the museumgoing public will line up, go out of its way, to view something spectacular, whether there's much in the way of educational value. ![]() Rowan Atkinson is truly at his best as the loveable and goofy character. To be honest, I also thought the TV series was funny and I was really hoping for a full length movie. ![]() Even though it broke a rule (Bean speaks a bit differently than the TV series, it's still freshly squeezed comedy and fun for the whole family. Especially when the airport officer says "Well you could really use some " I was laughing like crazy. It's so funny how a goofy British mumbling character causes so much trouble in the United States of America. Flawed, but comedic ally fascinating, this film is a MUST WATCH for the Mr. ![]() It's so funny how a goofy British mumbling character causes so much trouble in the United States of A faithful, delightful and hilariously laughing riot feature film to the British television film. A faithful, delightful and hilariously laughing riot feature film to the British television film.
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