Document Type
Review Essay
Abstract
[First paragraph]
It may very well be easier to learn rather than to unlearn. Modes of learning quickly become habit forming; habits tend to become deeply ingrained and die hard. In the visual art world the roles that curator and viewer play can become routine and effectively cloud one's aesthetic vision like so much residue on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Reorienting the viewer's visual experience and taming the curator's heavy hand are among the aims of Barbara Kendrick and Timothy van Laar in Losing the Instructions, a two person installation at the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery in Lincoln, Nebraska. The problem that these artists address is that in the art world the adventure of looking has come under attack: various art historiographical "isms," "movements," and otherwise arbitrary designations and labelings have caused a rift between the museum-goer and the art. Both modernism and postmodernism have in many ways trumped art with an overly academic, preprogrammed script that condescendingly informs an assumingly incapable audience as to what is good, bad, important and, worst of all, just what the viewer should see and how they should see it. In Losing the Instructions, though, Kendrick and Van Laar have effectively hijacked the museum and taken the curator hostage: they each act autonomously as both artist and curator while utilizing their own art and the permanent collection of the Sheldon Art Gallery.
Repository Citation
Taylor, Larry M.. "Flinging the Museum Guide Far Outside the Doctrinal Window." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 5, no. 1, 2025, pp. 1–7. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol5/iss1/10
Comments
Review of art exhibition: Losing the Instructions at the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska. September 06, 2003 -- December 19, 2003.