Monday, May 19, 2008

Now for the Museum -

When I was very young I had little knowledge of any museum except the Brooklyn Museum where my grandparents lived and which I visited quite often with my aunt and father and uncle and whoever else wanted to join me and my brother on out Sunday outings to my grandparent and was up to a trek to the museum on the days when we decided to make such a trip - but there I was only encountering totem polls and ancient artifacts - giant stone monoliths and such that were all very nice but nothing that indicated to me anything about the world of modern art or that there were any museums that held such works of art -

When I first visited either the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Museum of Modern Art or the Whitney Museum it all was very vague to me for some reason or other - but I do remember during my college days sitting in on a lecture given by Leo Castelli about how he chose various artists for his galleries exhibitions (quite by accident if you ask me) and I had not idea at that time just how famous he as an art dealer was or would become -

But my thinking about this time and still is is that there are a great many artists and the number is constantly increasing and while there are so many that might be creating excellent work - there are very few - relatively speaking who ever get their work in the museums - and at that time until very recently - my knowledge of just how many museums there were or are was rather skimpy as well - but my main point after all of this contemplation was that the great bodies of work that the many artists who do live in our society hardly have a chance to have their work seen by anyone if they are not shown in a gallery or most definitely in a museum and even what is shown in either of these outlets is most definitely out of sheer necessity if for no other reason - greatly reduced or edited so that there is rarely more than a mere sampling of any artists work that any individual student or art lover or aspiring artist may subject themselves to seeing - what a shame -


And then comes along to greet us just in the nick of time - the Internet - the computer - digitalization of images -the digital camera and bingo --------------Imagekind the ultimate answer to all of my dreams!!!!

No comments: