How to Speak Fluent "Museum"

The best way to learn any language is total immersion. If you live in a place long enough and open yourself up to the experience, then you’ll come away not just with a new tongue, but also with the flavor of the culture in which that language is expressed. For many people, art museums feel like a foreboding foreign nation with a language all its own. Frederick Wiseman’s new documentary, National Gallery, finally offers an immersion class in how to speak fluent “museum.” Wiseman’s 39^th documentary, National Gallery takes you inside London’s National Gallery to eavesdrop on the docents leading tours, spy on the early morning floor waxers, look over the shoulders of conservators, and even join executive meetings behind closed doors all in the name of learning what really happens in an art museum and how the very voice of the modern museum is changing with the times. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "How to Speak Fluent 'Museum.'"

Do Liars Make Better Artists?

“Oh! what a tangled web we weave,” Sir Walter Scott wrote in his 1808 epic poem Marmion, “When first we practice to deceive!” But what a pretty web it might be, researchers might add today. The idea that being a good liar helps one be a better actor, novelist, or painter isn’t a new one, but a group of business school professors recently put the idea to an empirical test and came up with some interesting conclusions about the connection between deceit and creativity. Not only might artists be better at lying, cheating, and general rule breaking, but it’s also possible that such behaviors might actually add to one’s creativity. At the risk of plunging the art world and the world in general into chaos, can we ignore the question of whether liars make better artists? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Do Liars Make Better Artists?"

How to See and Hear Vermeer

Many of Johannes Vermeer’s most famous paintings seem almost eerily silent: The Milkmaid pouring cool milk into a jar, The Lacemaker deep in concentration, the Girl with a Pearl Earring looking fetchingly over her shoulder. But in Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure, which runs through September 8, 2013 at the National Gallery, London, we not only see Vermeer—we “hear” him. Through genre pictures of people making music in the home for their own entertainment, Vermeer (and his contemporaries) captured the very sounds of the day in their paintings. Accompanied by musicians playing the music of Vermeer’s time in the galleries with the paintings, Vermeer and Music brings the Dutch master resoundingly to life. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "How to See and Hear Vermeer."

[Image: Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). The Guitar Player, about 1672. Oil on canvas. 53 x 46.3 cm. On loan from English Heritage, The Iveagh Bequest (Kenwood). © English Heritage.]

[Many thanks to the National Gallery, London, for providing me with the image above and other press materials related to Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure, which runs through September 8, 2013.]

Is Dying Detroit Trying to Murder its Museum?

How desperate can a city facing financial armageddon get? What’s the last resort for cities such as Detroit, wounded first by the failing American auto industry and then set bleeding like every other American city after the 2008 financial crash? Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr raised the possibility of selling the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts, worth about $15 billion, to help pay off some of the city’s debt. Setting aside the complicated issue of whether a city even has the legal right to sell its museum’s collection like any other movable asset, does a city have the moral right to sell works of art? What would the long-term effect of making such a short-term decision? If dying Detroit murders its museum, will it lose its soul, and the soul of its people? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Is Dying Detroit Trying to Murder its Museum?"

In Praise of the Small Art Museum

Waiting in line to pay admission late last month at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in a sea of heavy-winter-coated humanity, I asked myself why this has become the standard art museum experience—big building, big collection, big name exhibits, big crowds, and big admission prices. I began to think about all the smaller, quieter, more intimate museum experiences I’ve had. And then I came across Susan Jaques’ A Love for the Beautiful: Discovering America’s Hidden Art Museums, an extended love letter to as well as coast-to-coast tour of the forgotten art museums across America doing important work away from the maddening crowd. Following Jaques’ lead, here’s my own paean in praise of the small art museum. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "In Praise of the Small Art Museum."

[Image: Frank Gehry's exterior design for Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum on campus of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Image source.]