In his bestseller “Crime”, Ferdinand von Schirach tells the story of a museum attendant who destroys a sculpture after having to guard it for more than 20 years. A cathartic, radical act of liberation, but perhaps also a kind of judgment of taste, which one assumes may have gone through the minds of this man’s colleagues in a similar way. Conversely, it would be interesting to find out which work of art you can look at for hours every day for years without ever getting totally tired of it. Is that an aesthetic mark of quality? What potential gain in knowledge does it mean if you don’t work with certain works in a museum for professional reasons in passing, but permanently shares a room? Only the guards know that.
The result is as eclectic as it is compelling
The management of the Baltimore Museum of Art realized. It has asked 17 of its security guards to put together an exhibition from the museum’s 95,000-piece collection, which has now been opened under the title “Guarding the Art”. At a time when inclusivity in the arts is constantly being demanded, this is an obvious way to expand the curatorial circle beyond that of art historians and one that other museums strongly recommend emulating.
Everything is so colorful here: Sam Gilliam with “Blue Edge” from 1971.
(Photo: The Baltimore Museum of Art: Gift of Selma Rosen, Baltimore, BMA 1992.131, © Sam Gilliam; Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022)
The result is as eclectic as it is compelling: Pre-Columbian pottery alongside Abstract Expressionism and contemporary Agit-Prop. One of the wardens chose Max Ernst’s “Earthquake, Late Afternoon” because it “calmly looks at a catastrophe.” A colleague finds “A World in Darkness” by Dutchman Karen Appel successful “because he uses darker colors in it than in earlier works”.
Winslow Homer’s “Waiting for an Answer” (o) reflects the job of a museum attendant, found one museum attendant.
(Photo: The Peabody Art Collection. Collection of the Maryland State Archives. L.1924.25.16)
But there are also the curatorial decisions that perhaps only a museum attendant would make. Winslow Homer’s “Waiting for an Answer” found its way into the show because “it oddly reflects the experience of being a security guard – a job that consists mostly of waiting”. And the Jeremy Alden design “50 Dozen” was selected “because,” as the Wächterkurator reports, “that’s exactly what I always dream about when I get tired at work”https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/.” 50 Dozen” is a chair.