Art will cover the world

Foreboding electronically controlled gates opened before us and we stared at each other, hesitant to walk forth into what looked like the parking space of any industrial storage facility.

After going through a security screening and signing a form waving all kinds of rights we rarely ever thought about, we expected to enter a sacred mausoleum of some kind or at the very least a version of Ali Baba’s cave: rooms filled with glittering artistic treasures, crown jewels of Britain’s art world. Instead, in the decidedly cold controlled environment of the museum store, we were surrounded by crates piled high, dusty plastic covers, glass cases and retractable screens. The art in storage looked somewhat gritty, a Giacometti sculpture wedged between a Beuys blackboard and a Kieffer painting suddenly felt a lot more accessible than the very same artwork elevated on a plinth, strategically lit and accompanied by a facetious wall text.

A nice man gave us a guided tour of the facilities. He told us all about the major obstacles to the preservation of art: humidity, de-accession policies, theft, arson, insects. But he assured us that all these threats were more or less under control. In fact, the preservation team was doing such good work that the store would soon have to expand, taking over a great part of the area. An expression of terror glazed his blue eyes as he went on “In fact, if we keep on like that, the earth will eventually be covered in art.”

We could all adopt a work of art to liberate the overcrowded stores of our national museums. For instance, I could live with a Giacometti sculpture in my lounge and use a Beuys blackboard to write weekly “to do” lists. The world would be a museum as Baudrillard argues when he states that, were museums really democratic, they would be taken apart by the people who could claim a right to bits and pieces of it.

I’m not sure that was exactly what our guide meant, but I would not be surprised if one day his fear of art taking over the world got the better of him and he smuggled a termite colony into work.

Travel: a Good Lesson in Ignorance

If it is true that travel broadens the mind and raises the spirits, it is also true that it can drastically shrink your shrewdness and lower your ability to communicate.

I was reminded of that while spending an academic weekend in Warsaw. At Luton airport, having a coffee in the departure lounge, I felt confident that I would easily find my way around. After all, I was equipped with a Rough Guide and an extensive Polish vocabulary consisting of yes (tak), no (nie), thank you (dziękować) and the name of my gracious host (Wojtek). Warsaw would be my oyster.

As I tucked in for the night in a child-sized cot set up in a room I was to share with two of my colleagues for the next three days, I was reminder of how small an oyster could be. Did that dampen my spirits? Absolutely not! Between museum visits and talks about art all delivered in infinite variations of accented English, I inflicted my knowledge of the local language on whoever was at hand.

When a kind academic refilled my beer at dinner and I responded with a resonant “dziękować”, I found myself trapped in an even tighter corner than my sleeping quarters: the kind man enthusiastically responded in long tirades of perfect Polish which made no more sense to me than any other series of soft and hard sounds. I resorted to the one viable option I could think of: smile and nod in the hope that nobody would notice my utter bafflement. When my subterfuge seemed to work and the deluge of sounds kept coming, I shed my pride and resorted to the ultimate option. Still smiling, I called out: “Wojtek!”

If I couldn’t hold up my own in a conversation without sounding like an opinionated yet polite three year old child, at least I had a friend who could translate.