Drip 3 – August 2, 2017
Museums are better than the 6 o’clock news
The recent political shenanigans, a lack of trust in the media and all this talk of fake news have presented an interesting opportunity for museums. Aside from becoming as good a destination for dinner with friends as they’ve long been for exhibitions, “it seems that, despite all the garbage going on […], or perhaps because of it, people are turning to art for comfort and stimulation.”
And it’s logical people interested in keeping a solid perspective on the world would turn to museums. Many of today’s issues and conflicts have important historical/cultural components they can shed light on, and artists being artists are perfectly suited to provoke the old thinking block with creative interpretations of things that matter to us.
And the fact that museums are considered among the most trusted institutions helps. They’ve done a good job staying above the political fray with a rigorous and disciplined approach to what and how they exhibit, “leading people to increasingly [seek them out] as a primary source of information and in turn leading [museums] to think a bit differently about how they do things.”
Which they’re doing plenty of and it’s starting to show. The visitor experience is becoming as much social as it is cultural, and you don’t have to look far to find relevance in their exhibitions:
From Selfie to Self-Expression
We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85
