The museum as muse: Artists reflect

by Kynaston McShine

Since public museums came into being in the late 18th century, artists have looked upon them with a mixture of reverence, complicity, suspicion, and disdain. In The Museum as Muse, artists of many persuasions speak their minds about museums, their functions and spaces, their practices and politics, and their relationship to the art they contain. More than 60 artists are represented by a wide range of photographs of museum patrons by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Elliot Erwitt; "personal museums" and "cabinets of curiosities" by Charles Wilson Peale, Marcel Duchamp, and Claes Oldenburg; fantasies of the destruction or transformation of museums by Hubert Robert, Ed Ruscha, and Christo; and more, including works created especially for this project by contemporary artists, and an anthology of statements and writings by artists about museums. This volume was published to accompany an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Genres: Art

296 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Kynaston McShine (born 1935) is a Trinidadian-born museum curator. In 1966, as curator at the Jewish Museum, he organized the first museum survey of minimalist art, Primary Structures (1966 exhibition). At the Museum of Modern Art, where he became associate curator in 1968, he initiated the innovative Projects series and has organized some of the museum’s most important exhibitions, including the early survey of conceptual art, Information (1970); exhibitions of Marcel Duchamp (1973), Joseph Cornell (1980), and Andy Warhol (1989); The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect (1999); Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul (2006); Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years (2007). He has held positions in the MOMA's Department of Painting and Sculpture as Associate Curator, 1968–71; Curator of Exhibitions, 1971–84; Senior Curator, 1984–2001; Acting Chief Curator 2001-03 and Chief Curator at Large, 2003-2008. In 2003, McShine was the recipient of the CCS Bard for curatorial excellence.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Vikas Singh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is an interesting study on how artists tend to look at museums. The essay and introduction is a detailed thesis into the various theories and interpretations artists have when it come to museums. The book also has examples of works by artists like Charles Wilson, El Lissitzky, Marcel Duchamp, Barbara bloom, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Joseph Cornell, Herbert Distel and Mark Dion amongst others. There are some brilliant examples of installations. However for me when photographs and installations displayed in the book are average and there is little in these to create 'awe"