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Why do we allow so-called art experts to tell us what art is good and what is not?Do we allow experts to decide what music we should listen to? We do not allow anyone to tell us what religion we should follow, thankfully that time is past, for the present. We do not allow anyone to tell us what sport or hobbies to get involved with.Why do we allow 'experts' to choose what art is hung in our art galleries? We pay for both the art galleries and the curators' salaries, shouldn't we demand that they buy art that we like? I recently visited the Perth Art Gallery in Western Australia. The people I was with and I were very disappointed. There was only one painting that we greatly liked, Hans Heysen's 'Into the sun'. There was a lot of mediocre modern-style art, and probably equally much rubbish. Outstanding among the rubbish were two pieces. The first was a black canvas with a thin yellow line around it; nothing else, just that. The outstanding waste-of-space was a work consisting of four large canvases, each about 2m square and completely black. The only other thing that you could say about them was that they alternated from flat black to a somewhat lumpy black. |
Do you think that our art galleries are being run as well as they could be? What alternatives are there?Art galleries could be run democratically. There could be some form of voting on what pieces should be bought and hung and what should not. As a starter, I suggest that a section of each State-owned Australian art gallery be required to devote one section to democratic selection. I suggest that all pieces hung in this section should also be displayed on a page on the Internet. Against each representation on the Net page there should be a couple of buttons - approval and disapproval. For any 'art-work' to stay in this section of the gallery it would have to achieve some pre-set level of approval.Any other suggestions? Email address at the top of this page. |