Debate: Museums are bad at telling us why art matters

[@Kenji000]

Matthew Taylor is so incredibly charasmatic during his closing debate I could of sworn I heard the rallying music from the "Return of the king" movie slowly rising up as he spoke... Listen to his (very compelling) speech starting at 42:28

[@dlwatib]

In my opinion, art museums are very good at insisting that art does matter, but not good at all at telling us why it matters or why it should matter or why it might once have mattered. Inherently, by pulling a work out of its original cultural context, framing it or putting it in a glass box, lighting it, and labeling it with an artist's name, date, and such irrelevant constructionist details as "oil on canvas", it deliberately restricts the very contextual clues that would provide our intuition with a specific sense of meaning, and instead substitutes a generic pedestal or frame proclaiming that there must be a generic importance here somewhere, if only you are clever enough to contemplate it in the right frame of mind. In some cases the art is good enough to evoke the right frame of mind in the contemplative viewer, in other cases you're better off contemplating shoe boxes in a shoe store. My real indictment of museums of modern art isn't that they fail to tell is why modern art matters, my indictment is that they choose to exhibit objects that clearly do not matter. If you put crap on a pedestal, you don't get crap that matters, you just get a crappy pedestal.

[@Naturalist1979]

A fine debate indeed. Having listened to it, I'd vote in favor of the motion.

[@tenember]

(Spoiler) The vote was called wrong. It looks clear to me that the side for the motion won.

[@sean57]

hello, we have nothing better to do so we thought we'd gather around in pomp and posh settings and explain the meaning of the color blue and let you know at the end weve really just spewed authentic British gibberish for the last hour and a half.

[@youtopia4973]

Snow white and the 7 male white important old men Art matters - for who?

[@zeno6387]

for me.

[@texjernigan]

Ben Lewis is brilliant, starts at 23:33

[@wittgensteinvernor8173]

I say value creative expression and enjoy the fuckin mystery

[@daquidi]

i think we should continue to speak.... may be listen, eating is good too... and let s not forget drinking. we must continue to drink.... and sleep. never forget to sleep.

[@LawrenceDunn101]

Ben kills this. Damn straight.

[@jonobrow]

Ben Lewis' contribution is almost totally irrelevant. He talks pretty much exclusively about contemporary art galleries, not about museums. If the debate title was "Contemporary art galleries are bad at telling us why art matters" then I doubt you'd even have an opposition to begin with.

[@JadenJahci]

"Authentic Original thought" is what matters,.. not "art"

[@namexox]

Alan Botton saying modernist response to the public question for what their art work is for would be illegitimate and vulgar to them is just ignorance. The impressionist to the surrealist has manifestoes. And when he states once the public looks at the work there’s puzzlement he or she can then just look at the plank next to the work for its explanation.

[@elfinearts3245]

Had to make a comment from hearing the boring waffling from the panellist Firstly Alan de Botton saying Churches are better than Museums because Museums more boring. PLEASE I don’t need a religious two face nut in my face right now. Most people walking around art museum don’t hardly read planks but view the work and get their own judgements and inspiration (just like critics) whether from looking at the artist draughtsmanship and its meaning fullness.

[@namexox]

Museums main purpose is to keep works of art of worth to display to the public. Fine art is painting, drawing and sculpture with a sense of beauty, whether from a cave painting a Greek bust or a Picasso drawing. Museums to displaying Crap from a million years ago to present day will still look like Crap and has no public worth.

[@paintingzoneart4026]

In my view this is a shockingly unrepresentative debate, with a display of vague, narrow, outdated viewpoints

[@jonobrow]

No, he doesn't, he talks pretty much exclusively about contemporary art galleries.

[@namexox]

Alan Botton your two face religious pulpit sermon is becoming annoying. Saying “ The salvation of Art and the Museums is Religion” And we all must ”Try and be bit more like Jesus” I have to switch you off here after 6 mins.

[@socialdistance.forever4744]

I agree art is for the show off who use a million pounds to light their cigar. The poor artist suffer because they can't afford canvas not to mention a tube of 200ml oil paint. Art is not for those who inherit inheritance and feel the need to throw paint all over a blank canvas. Every unique artist tells a story with every brush strokes. I am sick of these projector on canvas it doesn't tell of true talent. Get back to real subject and good composition. Maybe the art world need to raise all them great impressionist artists from the dead.