Museums and Memory

The MIA is playing host the the travelling collection, The Louvre and the Masterpiece. Now however wonderful it was, I'll saw it was entirely not what I was expecting.

Back story. I love the MIA, it is to me what an art museum should be: lots of marble, lots of quiet and there's a very pregnant sense of hope that you the visitor will achieve some deeper understanding of the heights to which humans may ascend and the depths to which their souls may shatter. This is probably from spending many wide-eyed trips there as a youngster and marvelling at the beauty, this massive place where everything was organized and beautiful and the common world of disorder and chaos and meanness that I tried so hard to pretend didn't exist just fell away. It was as beautiful an escape as my books.

The exhibit was well organized (yes, organization to me is very important...without it the rest almost matters for nothing) with each gallery leading well into the next. There were works representing most every major form of visual art: sculpture, painting, sketching, metalsmithing/gemcutting, drawing, etc. They led stories from pieces of masterwork to forgeries and lesser pieces, and obviously the show was a product of unimaginable years of research and study. I dutifully read each placard, each explanation and listened to my headset like a good little nerd. But. But, but, but.

Here I'm going out on a limb to explain something I am not entirely sure about. I left the museum that day feeling unsatisfied with the exhibit and I couldn't put my finger on it then but I think I've figured it out now, after being in the Houston Museum of Fine Art. That story to come.

In the other exhibits, including the others at the MIA (notably their architectural and Native American are amazing) there was enough homogenity for a person to get a real footing in the subject material. To be overwhelmed and consumed by it. Having only these several rooms of VERY disparate objects didn't let the viewer or at least me, completely immerse my mind in any specific subject with any sort of completeness to forget the externalities. And for me, that's what it takes. So while the pieces were amazing beyond any of my meager words, the exhibition did not have the same immersive power of many others I have been in and that was sad indeed for all the obvious planning and work that went into the execution.

Should you go? Without a doubt. Maybe your brain is less OCD than mine, and you can focus with more ease.