"More matter, with less art"*

Given that the average museum is displaying only 5-10% of its collection to begin with, this may seem a little counter-intuitive and border-line self-destructive, but discovery isn’t just about seeing more paintings, it’s about learning to look with fresh eyes**. And that takes more than the average time we spend with a given piece of art. 

Case in point: SAM houses apx. 25,000 works of art, and displays 2.5% of it. Viewing that small fraction would equate to you spending three and a half minutes with each piece in a week devoted exclusively to SAM with no breaks. This is bonkers.

Like each of us, every painting not only tells a story, but it belongs to one, and it’s a story we museum goers never get to see or hear. Current approaches to displaying art deprive us of these stories, reducing a painting to the status of an object. The result is a viewing experience that feels more like a visit to the Mall than an adventure into the unknown. 

Take a popular style of art that most of us are familiar with like Impressionism, which emerged while artillery shells and bullets were raining down on France. In protest at frightful living conditions that the bombing didn’t help, radical socialists were mobilizing in Paris to overthrow their government while that same government were organizing Army units to squash them. The place was a mess. 

So what on earth motivated the Impressionists to paint what they did, the way that they did, when they did? Why would they introduce a revolutionary technique that flipped off the Establishment just at a time when they needed the patronage of the moneyed and the reactionary? And what of the Expressionist, Realist and Academic painters who were competing for the same eyeballs and wallets? The result is an enthralling tale of naïveté, cunning, artistry, revolution, and rivalry that will change the way you look at a Monet or a Degas. 

Backstories have the power to change the way we experience art. If curators can bite the bullet once in a while to display less art with more context, I believe our museum visits can be made more immersive and compelling. In the meantime, there’s always Stefen and SAM 😀

* William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2

** I wish I had come up with this insight, but I'm paraphrasing the French writer Marcel Proust, author of the world's longest novel, a madeleine-induced reverie of 1.2 million words, and a staggering 9.6 million characters.