art museums and galleries are zoos
Artium has just opened a new exhibition titled Ez ukitu (Don’t Touch). The exhibition is a reflection on the relationship between art museums and galleries and the spectators and art fans who visit them. This reminds us of John Berger’s Why look at animals, which appeared in the well-known book About Looking (1980). While Berger focuses his attention on the act of observation of animal, it’s the perfect analogy of what most art galleries and museums have become as far as we are concerned. “Public zoos came into existence at the beginning of the period which was to see the disappearance of animals from daily life. The zoo to which people go to meet animals, to observe them, to see them, is, in fact, a monument to the impossibility of such encounters. Modern zoos are an epitaph to a relationship which was as old as man. Likewise in the 19th century, public zoos were an endorsement of modern colonial power. The capturing of the animals was a symbolic representation of the conquest of all distant and exotic lands. “Explorers” proved their patriotism by sending home a tiger or an elephant. The gift of an exotic animal to the metropolitan zoo became
a token in subservient diplomatic relations.”
“Yet like every other 19th century public institution, the zoo, however supportive of the ideology of imperialism, had to claim an independent and civic function. The whole purpose was to further knowledge and public enlightenment. And so the first questions asked of zoos belonged to natural history; it was then thought possible to study the natural life of animals even in such unnatural conditions”.
“Meanwhile, millions visited the zoos each year out of a curiosity which was both so large, so vague and so personal. A zoo is a place where as many species and varieties of animal as possible are collected in order that they can be seen, observed, studied. And, in principal, each cage is a frame round the animal inside it.”
a token in subservient diplomatic relations.”
“Yet like every other 19th century public institution, the zoo, however supportive of the ideology of imperialism, had to claim an independent and civic function. The whole purpose was to further knowledge and public enlightenment. And so the first questions asked of zoos belonged to natural history; it was then thought possible to study the natural life of animals even in such unnatural conditions”.
“Meanwhile, millions visited the zoos each year out of a curiosity which was both so large, so vague and so personal. A zoo is a place where as many species and varieties of animal as possible are collected in order that they can be seen, observed, studied. And, in principal, each cage is a frame round the animal inside it.”
