Lambdaphagy

juliathehappyhistorian:

lambdaphagy:

Today I toured the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp, a gallery of
boekdrukkunst set in the former workshop of the 16th century printer
and humanist Christophe Plantin.  The museum showcases work from the
9th century to the present, so you can turn a corner and pass from
illuminated medieval manuscripts to prize-winning 21st century art.

The juxtaposition is humiliating.

Disclaimer: I’m not angry, I just feel like someone criticised this museum for the wrong reasons and I feel like I, as an Antwerp historian, should reply to this. If I sound angry, that’s probably because English is not my mother tongue. I prefer an open debate on the tasks of museums rather than just saying “your argument is invalid, period.” So feel free to counter my arguments. :)

I regularly visit the MPM and I used to be very critical towards their set up before they changed it in the summer of 2016. The museum staff was very critical too, that’s why they changed. So I don’t blame you for being critical after your visit in December 2015. But people saying things like this don’t seem to know a lot about historical and educational museums, and the interaction between a museum and its context.

The MPM and other Antwerp museums have the duty to present the history from one subject (in this case the Plantin press) within the broader history (in this case of Antwerp, the printing press, humanism, sixteenth-century lifestyle, art). In fact, every good museum should do that. I know a museum that only focusses on one particular subject in one particular period and I must say it was boring, I didn’t learn anything and I had seen it all after 20 minutes. On the other hand, you have for instance the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam which also displays paintings by other painters: Van Gogh’s friends, people who inspired him and yes, art by twenty-first-century artists. How is that humiliating? The MPM is exactly the same: it shows you the history of book production (with a strong focus on the sixteenth century), placed in the bigger history of Antwerp, the Low Countries and Europe. It teaches you something. Both the illuminated manuscripts and the twenty-first-century art are only minor parts of the museum since the focus point has been and will be the sixteenth-century press.

About the prize-winning twenty-first-century art … Have you ever heard of temporary expositions? You see it everywhere. It gives contemporary artists the chance to show their works AND brings a new public to the museum. It’s not part of the museum an sich, and therefore should not be seen as such. Did you read the booklet? And did the booklet say there was an undeniable link between the standard set up and the temporary exposition? Was this modern art considered to be a crucial aspect of a museum on the sixteenth-century press? Because there’s not necessarily a juxtaposition when it comes to a temporary exposition if the curator didn’t intend it to be so. 

Ik hekel het MPM helemaal niet.  Liever, ik vind ’t een van mijn favorieten ter wereld.  Ik hekel in plaats dervaan de hele van hedendaags schilderij, want ’t zou beter dan middeleeuws schilderij zijn, maar niet is.  Het museum kan er niks doen, he.

(Het spijt me voor de fouten– Nederlands is ook niet mijn moedertaal.)