But, daaarling, it's Aaaart!
Yesterday I came across a charming thread on Twitter of people posting pix of their very little ones in museums and art galleries taking no notice of Ye Art and Artefactz, but totally absorbed by things like the bottoms of the display cabinets, the gratings for the underfloor heating, the tiles, etc etc, or just the potential of the floors for wriggling on.
I was rather reminded of Stephen Potter's 'Exhibitionmanship' chapter in One-Upmanship (1959):
[T]o suggest that you have the artistically awakened eye and can form your own opinion in perfect independence of the kind of judgement which the lay-out and emphssis of the exhibition seem to demand, pause a long time before some object which has nothing to do with the exhibits - say a fire extinguisher or a grating in the floor through which warmed-up museum air rises[.]
(Was once tempted to do this at a exhibition of artworks in a converted church in which there was a Very Fine Harmonium, which I do not think was A Found Object part of the actual exhibition.)
Then I thought that surely there are people who find pleasures in galleries and museums which are not those that are the core purpose of the said institutions -
No, I do not mean the caff!
I think of the Tate Modern and the numbers of people one will see turning away from the art within to the vista without - Sweet Thames Run Softly -
- and possibly, these days, quite deliberately peering into the unintended ongoing performance art behind the glass walls of the luxury flats overlooked by it.
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