Days after the new installation of the contemporary galleries at the Museum of Modern Art, my wife and I visited “Take Two: Worlds and Views”. Coming out of the magnificent Janet Cardiff sound piece we were shocked by a group of girls climbing up to Yinka Shonibare’s mannequins, holding them and taking photos (with flash) of each other. We run and threw them out of the platform, outraged and horrified.
Hard to believe museum-goers would wait for a guard to leave with the intention of attacking an artwork.
The Shonibare incident prompted reactions from MoMA officials (“This is getting too far”) and an inspection from the artist himself. Yet it is not the first time this happens. An Anne Truitt sculpture was damaged and the brouhaha was considerable. I was forbidden by the illiterate guards at MoMA to walk on the Carl Andre floorpiece until I achieved a compromise from Glenn Lowry, John Elderfield and company to teach the guards about Andre’s desire to be stepped on. Now I’m happy to go there and feel the lead (indeed, the reaction from MoMA officials has been always seamless and remarkable).
Two thoughts came to my mind repeatedly after the Shonibare incident my wife and I were involved in at MoMa. One is how much I miss (despite never having met any of them due to my very young age) those museum guards that, in the 1960´s, kept art safe at MoMA and other museums. Brice Marden, Dan Flavin, Sol LeWitt, Lucy Lippard, Robert Ryman knew the art and cared for the art. How painful to compare them with the current type of guards: illiterate in art, lacking any interest in any artistic manifestation whatsoever, prone to leave art unattended and neglect their duties, unable to provide any directions to paintings or artists, working on it for the (scarce) money and doing it unwillingly and showing evident apathy...
This kind of worker is to be found, typically checking the time to leave, disdainfully leaning against a corner at MoMA and most museums in America and the world, unfortunately. The heads of security say they have art degrees and some are artists, but I see mostly uninterested minorities for whom “Jasper Johns” is as unknown as the sublime in Abstract Expressionist painting. Don’t even ask. It’s dispiriting.
The laziness and disrespect (outright rudeness) of the Latino guards at the excellently classy Neue Galerie enraged me and prompted me to write a complaint to the museum. A palatial ambience and a 500-dollar membership need much more than nose-picking, cell-phone-playing, loud-talking guards that don’t guard, don’t like their jobs and will make sure every visitor knows they’d rather be bouncing salsa clubs in the Bronx. Let them go!
How fondly I remember that veteran guard at the wonderful Des Moines Art Center in Iowa who, retired, worked at the museum as a hobby and loved it, knew the art and drew himself!
At the Metropolitan it is not the laziness or unprofessional conduct of the guards. It is simply the blatant lack of them. Many times I’ve seen entire galleries unattended, tourists touching, seating on sculptures, taking pictures with flash. Sometimes I have talked to guards about this alarming situation- they agree. There are not enough guards, but nothing seems to be done about it. My complaint letters have gotten no response.
Wouldn’t it better to close galleries than have them opened and exposed to vandalism? The famously (and infamously) unguarded Lehman Wing is so stripped of security you could carry the graceful Princess de Broglie painted by Ingres on your shoulders and go away.
It is indeed a miracle that nothing grave has happened yet (that I know of) but it might be just a matter of time until some freak slashes a Greco or shatters a Frank Lloyd Wright window. Then, only then will the Met place a guard in every room, not one for each twenty five like now.
New York museums seem to have a less-prepared staff than museums in the Midwest or elsewhere. I cherish conversations my wife and I had with knowledgeable guards at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; Des Moines… Mega-museums seem to be attacked by a certain big-city syndrome of lame guards.
The second thought aroused by the Shonibare attack is the frightening kind of public museums face. People that will go to MoMA not to enjoy the art but to concoct a way to avoid the guard and attack a sculpture. This is a frightening thing to happen, but it is a challenge museums have to cope with: no peaceful, art-loving visitors but tourists needing to touch, teenagers needing to harm, individuals with prepared assault plans (the slashed Lichtenstein in Austria has inevitably to be thought of).
Right now, I see museum security at its minimum in terms of quantity and quality. How MoMA (and most museums) will deal with uninterested guards and poisonous visitors is something that will have to be watched in the present and future.
