What Art Museums Are For

things seem to be going really well with
the institution of the Art Museum all
the big cities have one new ones are
popping up constantly and the lines to
get into blockbuster shows can snake
around the block
but despite the buzz museums are
arguably not doing as much for us as
they might their whole purpose and
function in modern society has been left
oddly rather unexplored many of us show
up at these museums more out of guilt
than genuine pleasure the prestige of
art as opposed to any spontaneous
enthusiasm is what seems to keep a
sizeable share of people coming through
the doors and a lot of the more recent
art on display can be deeply puzzling to
behold even if we don’t generally reveal
our confusion for fear of seeming
foolish at the heart of the problem of
the Art Museum is an institutional
inability to define in simple terms what
art might actually be for and quite why
it should matter so much
we may be heartily convinced of art’s
importance but we have a devilishly hard
time pinning the significance down here
is a suggestion the purpose of art is
therapeutic art is there to lend
inspiration and consolation in relation
to a number of the challenges of being
human art helps us to cope with among
other things our inability to focus on
what’s beautiful and precious in life
our tendency to caricature others and
forget about their sufferings our
inclination to lose hold of our inherent
creativity and playfulness are
frustrated longings to create better
societies and our need for stillness
perspective and solemnity in an angry
chaotic world even though it may be
fashionable to say otherwise art is
definitely not there just for art’s sake
it is a tool to help us to live and die
well it opens our eyes it returns us to
a sense of creativity it connects us
with strangers it shakes us from
political complacency it stills are
agitated hearts art has a healing
function this gives us all we need to
define what an art museum should be an
institution that displays and arranges
art in ways that can
steal its audiences such a stark and
deliberately vulgar definition has
revolutionary implications currently
most art museums are laid out
chronologically as if the most important
thing about works of art was when they
were made but with a better focus on the
function of art worse could now be
rearranged according to the distinctive
troubles of the soul they can help us
with there could be a gallery devoted to
addressing the Agony’s of love another
focused on helping us cope with anxiety
a third devoted to issues of envy a
fourth to aging and so on entire museums
might bite off one part of a therapeutic
emotional curriculum there might be a
museum for calm that would collect a
range of works that help to usher in
this prized mood from across all
centuries in media there could be a
museum for creativity a museum for
friendship and so on so I might be very
big others quite small
they might exist online or in a narrow
space between a pub and a kebab shop you
often hear it said that museums of art
are our new cathedrals in other words
that art can heal us as religions once
did it’s an intriguing and vital idea
but one which art museums
sadly haven’t actually taken up because
while they expose us to objects of
genuine importance they seem unable to
curate them in ways that link them
powerfully to our inner needs our new
cathedrals are underperforming
we should give up on the idea of the art
museum as some kind of dead storage
space for the history of the subject or
a whitewashed cavern that stays
intimidatingly silent as to its real
purpose the art museum deserves to be
reborn as a kind of superior chemist or
drug store that vividly signposts art
and culture and uses it to bring
inspiration solace and meaning to our confused anxious and troubled societies