LEWISTON – Art museums shouldn’t filter the public’s experience, the Great Falls Forum audience was told Thursday by the director of the Bates College Museum of Art.
Mark Bessire explained how museums throughout the world have had basically the same architectural form for 200 years, but he said that mold is being broken more often as exhibitions are becoming less linear and rigid.
“We need to stop following the audiences and lead them,” he said.
His talk was titled “Unpacking the Museum and Raiding the Icebox: The Radically Transformed World of Art Museums.”
Bessire said he believes museums must look for ways to rebuild themselves with a broader mission and sense of purpose, thus enabling them to grow collections, not store them away.
He described the longtime dependence upon a classic art museum with a central dome and architectural elements derived from the Pantheon and the Parthenon. Art was almost always displayed within boundaries of chronology and genre, he said. Galleries were in predictable layouts and movement through them was always one-way.
Some 60 or 70 years ago, that changed. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City was a primary example, he said. Museums experimented with the “white cube” concept of displaying art in an attempt to allow an objective experience, Bessire said, although he stated that that can never really be accomplished.
Bessire talked about renovation activities just now started at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, which he said is among the best college museums in the country. With slides, he showed the classic style of the building with a central dome, and he told the audience the building’s protected historic status prevents a change to the facade. The college is building a new entrance to the side of the original building with underground access to the museum. The back of the building, which faces the community rather than the campus quadrangle, will be redone in a modern style, featuring lots of glass.
The idea of an underground entrance to avoid harming a historic building was the approach taken several years ago by the Louvre in Paris, he said.
Bessire also spoke about museums’ responsibilities to accommodate changing works. Artists no longer produce pieces that fit, he said. Andy Warhol was an innovator who “raided the icebox” by creating a display of shoes and chairs he found in a museum basement.
Museums are increasingly challenged in their choice of what’s art, Bessire noted. When that happens at the Bates College Museum of Art, “we try to explain ourselves” in text that accompanies the art, he said.
Bessire rated the Portland Museum of Art, designed by noted architect I.M. Pei, among the important museums in the United States. He said recent trends include museums being built by wealthy individuals to show their own collections, and museums that feature a single artist.
Some important artists don’t expect their work to be shown in a museum. The current work being done by William Pope.L, who teaches at Bates and is an internationally known artist, “is community based and doesn’t belong in a museum,” Bessire said. He urged Lewiston-Auburn residents to view Pope.L’s “Black Factory,” an interactive performance art installation on wheels, when it begins a national tour here within a few days.
Bessire has recently served on the committee to choose public art for the new Lisbon Falls elementary school and the committee to choose an artist for the new Monument Square bus stop in Portland, and has worked with the Maine Arts Commission on the Contemporary Art Development Committee.
He was a Fullbright fellow at Sukuma Museum in Mwanza, Tanzania, and a Helena Rubinstein fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In addition, he was a William J. Heffernan scholar with the Columbia Business School at Columbia University.
This program at the Lepage Conference Center of St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center concluded the Great Falls Forum’s monthly presentations for the 2005-06 season. People with suggestions for future speakers are invited to phone Mari Maxwell at (207) 689-2857 or send her e-mail at [email protected] before May 26.
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