Tenderness, Discomfort

Gatekeeping is relative

One of you pointed me to a post by Eugene Rabkin on his blog Arguably called “Dear Museums, Stop Telling Us What to Think,” the core of which is straightforward and seemingly uncontroversial: Artwork labels are getting didactic to the point of condescension. Meaning: in exhibitions of apparently lofty concepts, wall text tends to interrupt rather than encourage contemplation—with ugly, waddling language much like that found on the last page of classic novels republished as K-12 teaching aides (“study” questions too concerned with plot and symbolism). Who, one wonders, are these guides for?

As an example, the author recalls seeing Lucian Freud’s Hotel Bedroom (1954) (which he misidentifies as Girl in Bed (Caroline Blackwood)) at the National Portrait Gallery in London this year.

“My reveries were cut short,” Rabkin writes, “as soon as I read the accompanying label, which said the following, ‘As with other portraits of Blackwood, it demonstrates both a tenderness towards her and a suggestion of discomfort on her part.’”