Returning to Art Museums

Quinn: Hello and welcome back to Pictorial on Relay FM. I’m Quinn Rose. I am someone who did not go to art school, but I love learning about art, talking about it and going to see it even when the experience is a little different than usual. 

Betty: Hi, I'm Betty. I'm also someone who didn't go to art school, but I have been working as a gallery guide at an art gallery for the past eight years. Although not recently for quite a while. Although recently I have also visited the gallery again, under very different circumstances. And we may talk about that today.

Quinn: So Betty and I both live in areas that have recently reopened museums in some capacity. I'm in Chicago. and you're in Toronto and we both took advantage of this opportunity. So I figured we'll talk a little bit about what that experience was those like, where we went and how we did this and how we feel about it. And then we're also gonna talk a little bit about just some general art museum stuff and how to talk about art and share it with your friends.

Betty: I did want to kind of, before I dive into what it's like to return to visiting art museums, kind of just talk about like how I've been staying engaged in art during this time of you know, lockdown and not being able to go anywhere. Obviously, you know, Quinn and I—we’re doing this podcast, which is a pretty good way to stay engaged. You know, we're researching art all the time and you know, every two weeks we have an episode. So this is good, but if you don't have a podcast yourself, you should start one, but if you're not doing that—we did, obviously we had an episode where we talked about virtual experiences. But one thing I've been actually doing is our gallery guide program at the AGO recently kind of—this wasn't even anything official at the gallery started, us gallery guides, we just started holding like Zoom calls together, like just meetings. Like we usually have meeting sessions physically when we go into the gallery, but we decided to just do it even though we're not actually doing anything. So then we, every Friday, like our team every Friday during the time we would normally have a shift, we would just have a call and talk about art. And we will bring something to talk about. It can be something in the gallery. It can be something else, like just art, something we've seen in a different city. Something we've seen traveling back when we used to do that. And also like, we've talked about like art in our home and I don't actually have much art in our home, in my home, but I shared with them a painting that I did—which is really terrible, but, you know, whatever. So we've kind of been staying engaged that way. And it's, it's been, you know, it's been quite nice and I think it'll be an easy transition back into hopefully eventually being back like the way we were before. I haven't restarted the gallery guide shifts. I don't think they're going to restart again until at least fall or winter, or maybe not even 2021. So we’ll see.

Quinn: Yeah. well, that's really cool. It's cool that you have like a little book club, but for art. 

Betty: Yeah. 

Quinn: I don't have a group of art minded friends in the same way, but I have been doing a little bit myself. One big thing for me is looking at outdoor art, which is obviously a lot more safe and accessible in these times, especially, you know, in warm weather right now in the summer. So I have made a point of walking around and looking at different murals that are in areas that are accessible to me, which has been really cool to see. I've been actually, in my neighborhood recently I've seen people painting new murals on storefronts and stuff. Clearly different businesses have contracted artists to make different local murals. And so I love seeing the new pieces going up as well. That's been really fun to spot. And depending on where you are, some art museums are even doing exhibits that are intended to be viewed from the outside. I know that specifically the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco did this recently and the artist Chanel Miller did a piece that is viewable from outside the building. So I'm not sure if this is widespread at all right now, but I know it's happening at least there and maybe other places. And that's pretty cool too. So, if you don't feel safe visiting an art museum under any circumstances, or especially like, if you're in an area that is more heavily hit right now, and it's not safe to open any of these places, then maybe checking out some outdoor spaces where you can be much more easily socially distanced with lots of airflow. That's good too. 

Betty: Exactly. Here in Toronto, we have, I don't know if you guys have the same designation as us? We’ve technically officially entered stage three of reopening. Which happened, I think, as of this recording, maybe it was like a week ago, or week or two ago at the beginning of August. And Toronto was actually the last place in I think all of Canada to get into stage three. We’re obviously the most densely populated place in Canada, I'm pretty sure. And we have the highest amount of cases. So it makes sense why, you know, we didn't open up until significantly later. So yeah, you know, hopefully, the trend is that things will slowly open up and we'll be able to get back to normal. So yeah, the gallery that I work at, so the Art Gallery of Ontario, has re-opened with limited hours and limited—most of the building is open. One of the floors is closed, but that, I think that's just because there was supposed to be a new exhibition, but, you know, obviously the new exhibition has been postponed. So most of the building is open. The hours are only from 10:30 to 5 from Thursday to Sunday. And obviously limited capacity. There's significantly less people being led in. You have to book your ticket in advance. I think initially there were, when they first reopened, which I think was mid-July you had to be a member in order to come. Now the general public can come as well, but you have to book a ticket and a time slot in advance and then show up not too early, not late. Exactly on time when your ticket says, and then, you know, they'll obviously ask you the typical COVID screening questions and then you'll come in. I think you can't come in with a group larger than maybe five people and you have to stay, you know, the two meter distance from other groups. And obviously you need a mask. The restaurants in the gallery are all closed. There's no food or drink. So, yeah, so it's definitely quite different from, you know, how we used to visit the art museum. Is this a similar thing you experienced, you experienced as well? 

Quinn: Yeah, a lot of the same things, you know, like coat check and restaurants were all closed. You had to book tickets ahead of time. The Art Institute specifically has a 25% capacity cap right now to allow for social distancing. Which is interesting, I will say that like, I basically only ever go places when there are not a lot of people there because I don't like crowds. So for me, it seemed like a relatively normal level of people, but that's because I only ever go to places when there's not a lot of people there. So, I mean, it was—social distancing was very possible in all areas. And masks of course were required. We didn't have preset times. You had to book your tickets in advance, but they didn't have a time stamp entry on them, which I didn't love. That felt weird to me. I wish there had been time designations, but I guess that they were just holding it at numbers capacity and kind of counting on it to shake itself out. I'm not really sure. But the one thing that really got me is that they had all these arrows that were supposed to like, direct the flow of traffic so people aren't crossing back and forth against each other, which makes total sense, but they didn't have enough. And I am—I am very dedicated to following all of the rules to do with COVID. Like, obviously they are absolutely essential and I wear my mask everywhere and I follow the best advice of scientists. And so of course, when I entered this space, I wanted to follow the arrows. But there's lots of different ways you can go. It's not just a simple, it's kind of like—in a lot of stores, they have like one way aisles. Not that anyone follows the directions. But stores like with one way aisles, you know, it's pretty straightforward. But museum rooms, there's lots of ways to get in and out of those. And there were not enough arrows. So my point is that I would be trying to follow the arrows and suddenly I'd be, I'd be facing an arrow that's facing me. And I'm like, how did this happen? They needed like three times as many arrows if they wanted that to work.

Betty: Yeah. I definitely noticed a similar thing. There were, there were arrows, not—I think not everywhere. And I don't know if this was something that they did similarly at the Art Institute, but like in like entry places, like main lobbies and main atrium spaces where there, I guess theoretically could be more traffic, they had arrows, but then when you get into a room, or like a less trafficked place, they won't have any arrows, which like you said, could lead you into a situation where you, you walk and an arrow is telling you to head back and you're like, but I was just there. So, yeah, that's definitely, that's a little bit difficult to follow. And obviously people were also not following the directions of the arrows even when there were, and the security had to constantly tell people to turn around. You know, which if they told me to do so, I did of course.

Quinn:  On the note of people following directions though, I did see 100% of people actually wearing their masks and actually wearing them properly over their mouth and nose. But people at the Art—everyone I saw at the Art Institute was actually wearing their mask properly, which I assume was a combination of hopefully people just following the rules and also the security guards there who all wearing nice, very nicely matching and branded Art Institute masks were actually enforcing the masks mandate, which obviously did a long way towards helping me feel safe there. So that was great.

Betty: I definitely also remember seeing everybody wearing their masks properly, which was really great. And again, like I didn't, other than the people I was there with, I wasn’t… I wasn't physically close with anybody anyway. So it was totally fine and I felt very safe. And, yeah, like I was saying, I don't personally like going to an art gallery when it's crowded or, you know, too many people either. Cause like, I think I mentioned to you sometimes I spent 40 minutes looking at one painting and if there's people around me, they'd be really annoyed that I just refuse to move. But when I'm working at a gallery, sometimes there may be a lot of people. I’ve worked during—usually it's like the last two days of a special exhibition that's really, there's like what seems like a million people at the art gallery. It's almost like Christmas shopping where people are like shoulder to shoulder. I'm like, I would never want to experience an exhibition that way, but some people apparently do. I don't think, you know, we'll be allowing that anytime soon. The only time where there was like a huge crowd—it was funny, the gallery closed at five, but for some reason at like five after four, everybody decided to leave at the exact same time. And we went to the entry, or where you exit, and there were like 50 people in this one little space trying to leave. And of course I had to be like, okay, let let's spread it out, but I was just like, oh, wow. Like, I guess everybody decided four o’clock, I'm done. That was kind of the experience I had. One thing I have heard about from the, just like the working in the gallery side, like I've heard from some of the employees who have started working there is that the issue I think with the timed tickets, like whatever you show up at 1:00 PM or 3:00 PM, is that there's a lot of no shows. And that might be why the Art Institute decided not to do that. Or if they started doing that, maybe they realized, okay, people aren't coming out in time. So they just stopped. I think it's a combination of, you know, people not being punctual and people who maybe intend on coming and are like, yeah, okay. I want to come. And then last minute are like, oh, I don't know, like I'm kind of scared. So that they don't show up. Like obviously with the tickets that you like buy ahead of time, like you paid for it. That's great. But sometimes the members, you know, it would be a free ticket anyway. They can come whenever they want. So they're not really losing anything by not showing up. But obviously that is not… I suggest don't do that because you're taking up the slot of someone who would have actually wanted to be there, but then couldn't because like the, the, I think once they reach capacity, in terms of the amount of tickets sold for that hour, it'll say sold out on the website and you can't book anymore for that time slot. So, so please don't do that for those few who are coming. One thing I didn't like, I would say mostly, it was just, it was really great to go back, but the thing that I didn't like the most was there was no seating anywhere. They took away all the chairs. I don't know if you experienced that, but literally every single chair was taken away except for like 10 chairs in the, what was the espresso bar, but there's no espresso, but there's still the chairs left in the cafe. But obviously, you know, that was all taken up. So after—we were there for like two hours and then we were exhausted. And normally when I'm at a gallery, I'll be sitting down like every 15 minutes, but I couldn’t this time.

Quinn: There was still seating at the Art Institute. I feel like taking away seating is like an ADA issue, which again, I guess, would be called something different in Canada. But, yeah, they still… I don't remember if these are exactly the same, it’s been a while since I was at the Art Institute. And I also, I forgot to mention this, it was free. They made it free for the first like five days or something for Illinois residents. And I was like, don't mind if I do. It's usually redonkulously expensive, which is why I haven't gone here in years. But anyway, yeah. They had these big benches and there were signs on them that were like, please social distance. But they were literally like six feet long. So if there was a person sitting on either end they would still be socially distant. And also there just weren't enough people for that to be like a problem. So at one point I did like sit down for a couple of minutes and it was really easy, like I wasn’t…

Betty: Yeah, I actually, you know what it is in Ontario, it's called the AODA. I wonder if I can raise that because yeah, it was definitely—I would say inconvenient, although you know, like I don't technically require a seat to be there for, you know, like physical reason, but, you know, they could do what other places do. Like just if it was like a bench that's not long enough, maybe just like tape off like the part that you don't want a second or third person to sit on. And if I remember correctly, we had a lot of large benches as well. That, yeah, that wouldn't have been a problem as long as you have like signage, saying, you know, don't have like 10 people pile onto this one bench. Or like, you know, stickers, like every six feet would have been fine, but they didn't have that. I guess maybe they don't want people to linger in a place for too long, but again at the same time, they can't stop me from standing in front of a painting for like 45 minutes. But I guess then my feet would be really tired and I would naturally leave, which is what we did eventually cause we were so tired. But yeah, I would say that's only really my one complaint was not being able to sit down, but other than that, like it was different, but I think like you said, cause I generally don't like visiting when there's too many people anyway, the only real difference was that I was wearing a mask. And there was no seat. 

Quinn: Yeah. It seems like our experiences are pretty similar, which makes sense because these seem to be about the basic guidelines that people are following. And for me personally, like for example, there is some indoor dining available in Chicago, but that's not something I feel comfortable doing at all because that's sitting inside for an extended period of time around other people, which is like… ugh, no. But the art museum, I was, when I thought about it, I was like, well, it's like a much larger space. There's lots of more airflow and people walking around instead of just like being in one place and just kind of breathing in the air of whoever else happens to be in the restaurant with you for however long. 

Betty: Yeah. 

Quinn: And the only reason that museums have been able to be open right now is because, because in Chicago—it is getting worse now, because of things like indoor dining, but like overall we're doing a lot better than a lot of other places in the United States. So obviously like if you are planning on venturing out to an art museum, be very, very careful, follow all directions and also like do your independent research to make sure that your specific county or town or whatever is in line with the recommendations of the CDC. It isn't just like… like if you live in Florida, I wouldn't go anywhere, you know?

Betty: Just stay in your house.

Quinn: Do your own research as well as like following the more external guidelines. But yeah, if you are able to, and if you do live in a place where you feel comfortable doing so, it was really fun to go and visit an art museum again, and to just get to walk around a bit. And, you know, I took a picture of me and my mask next to the Seurat painting that I'll be posting on the Instagram. That was really fun. And I was like, 2020 art museum chic. 

Betty: Yeah, I took a picture. We were in front of him, in the contemporary exhibition. Of course now I forget the name of the artist, but maybe I'll find out when I post this picture on Instagram. The artwork was a mirror reflection and there was like, there's artworks in the mirror and me and my two friends who went, we just, we took like, I guess a mirror selfie with all of us in our masks. And you know, it is definitely a different type of photograph being taken in a museum then before. The thing that I did kind of miss or, and I think I would miss, you know, if I didn't mention to you, I'm actually going back again this weekend, this Saturday, I'm going again. So like it's, I think it's the, it's the similar type of restrictions, but like a lot of ancillary things that we would have had at the AGO and probably many other museums, you know, isn't there. For instance, obviously there's no guides, so you can't really ask anybody for questions. The security guards, you know, are helpful definitely from time to time, but there's no like person who is designated to answer your questions. There's no tours. There's no events or performances. And I would say over the years, those, those have been things that I've really enjoyed in art galleries. And also, those have been things that have been able to attract a wider audience because there's more recreational things to do, you know, in art classes and coming in to do like a life drawing and painting sessions in the gallery. Those things definitely aren't there. And I think that I really miss, I kind of recommended everyone to go see the—we have an exhibition right now called Illusions: The Art of Magic. It's actually quite interesting. I've haven't been to an exhibition quite like this one before. It's like, it's an exhibition about the golden age of magic, kind of, you know, with like the Incomparable Albini and Harry Houdini and people like that. And it has like posters and art and paraphernalia and costumes and stuff from that period. But the thing I love about it was when it was open before COVID, there was like magic shows and performances there all the time. There's like people walking around doing card tricks. And every night I think on the half hour, there was a magic show where, you know, you go to the last room in the exhibition, you gather around there's a little stage and then they'll do a magic show. Obviously that's not going to happen. And obviously they're not going to get you to pick a card from two meters away. That's just not gonna happen. So it kind of, I mean, it's still a great show to see, but I just kind of—it kind of sucks. Cause I was like, oh, go see this show. It's got, some people are doing magic. And then some people I knew went and were like, there was no one doing magic. And I'm like, oh yeah, I probably should have, I should have known, but I just kind of assumed they would go back to what they had before. But. Yeah. 

Quinn: Yeah. There are going to be some things that do remain different for a long time. Even after we are able to regain like small amounts of normalcy at difference stages in this process, it is, there's a back and forth that's happening and we take these little safe bits wherever we can.

Betty: For sure. Yeah, so I kinda just wanted to share… so I went with two of my friends from work and they are, yeah, definitely friends of mine who are quite interested in art, but like me, you know, they don't have an art background. I think actually both of them are engineers, but they are are very interested in art, but obviously unlike me, they haven't been, you know, working as a gallery guide. Oh, and I, sorry, I don't know if I ever mentioned on the show. So my full time job is I work at a hospital's planning department. So they're from that work, not from the AGO work part.

Quinn: Betty's been having a really fun time this year. As might be able to guess from that job description.

Betty: Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, we've been working at the hospital and actually, AGO decided to do, they actually are doing a pass right now for all frontline frontline workers in Ontario. So anyone who's a healthcare worker or a grocery store worker, like an emergency services worker, get a free annual passes to the AGO. So I, I think I signed up the entire hospital. Like I emailed everybody. I'm like sign up for this right now! I don't think that the, I don't think the free ticket will be available by the time this podcast comes out. But I think I've told like the entire province by this point. So, they all got their tickets and we—one of them kind of said that she's been to the art gallery before, but because you know, she didn't know, doesn’t know like anything about the art or the context or the history, it was very difficult for her to figure out like what to do. Or like, I think she said she just walked around with a friend of hers just being very confused the whole time. They saw some stuff that they thought were interesting, but, she, you know, wanted to help with basically how to walk around in an art museum, like in more productive ways, I guess. And obviously there's no like right or wrong way to view an art museum. You don't have to know anything about art in my opinion. And I very often go to art museums where I don't know much or anything about the subject matter. Sometimes I'll know about like the period that the works are painted in or something. But I have been to like, for me, like the things that I'm the most clueless about is like ancient art. I've gone into like ancient Mesopotamian exhibitions, and I'm like 1000% clueless. But I think I still find ways to enjoy myself. So I just wanted to share some strategies and then maybe see if you have any recommendations yourself about that.

Quinn: Oh man. I feel like I don't really—it was kind of funny. So I went to the, I went to the Art Institute with my girlfriend and the way that I consume art museums is just like, I just really like thinking about how the art is arranged in a room. 

Betty: Oh, that's cool. 

Quinn: I don't have it enough art history knowledge beyond like a few select artists that I've like done deeper dives into—and you know, that list is ever growing because of this podcast, which is really fun, but I don't tend to have a lot of art theory to sort of examine individual works with. But what I really love to do is think about like, why were things put in the space the way they were? There were pieces, especially the contemporary art sections that I was looking at and I was trying to figure out like, what is part of this piece and what is sort of the curatorial decision in how it's being presented? Because it's like not just a painting on a wall, it's a, it's a very strangely shaped sculpture. And like, who decides what angle it goes on the wall at and that kind of thing? And so that's what I was doing. And my girlfriend was like, okay. And they were just amused by me, but yeah. So that's, that is how I really enjoy to consume especially contemporary art in museums. So I would recommend thinking about that kind of thing.

Betty: That's something I never actually would have thought of to recommend as something to do. And, but obviously now you say it, I actually think that's quite interesting, 

Quinn: It’s really fun because there aren't really any right answers. It's just you trying to figure out what someone else might've thought about a piece of art. And I feel like it's a more, and I just feel like it's a fun puzzle because it's not like—you can basically never Google that kind of thing. There's not like a right or wrong answer. Not that there is a right or wrong answer to any kind of art interpretation, but sometimes you can like verify theories with art historians or something, but like, in this kind of question, it really is just, you know, just thinking about a space, there's nothing more to it than that.

Betty: Right. Unless you happen to run into the curator in the gallery and happen to know that they are the curator and are like, so you put this here because of this? And they'll be like, no, or something, or maybe yes. Yeah. So, well, one thing that my friend, she did say that she did—her and her friend who went another time did come up with one thing to do, eventually like when they were like, okay, we need to like do something rather than just wander around aimlessly. So they decided to, when, whenever they go into a room, they would pick their favorite and least favorite works in the gallery and then would explain why. So, which is, I think it's a great idea. Cause you know, you don't have to know anything about anything. So you can just go up to this, you know, whatever, like Cubist painting, you don't even have to know that it's a Cubist painting and be like, this is, you know, my favorite because I like the color and the shapes and it's soothing. And I wanted to put it, I would like to put it on my wall and you can go up to like another one, a painting and be like, you know, this landscape is my least favorite because it's like colorless and boring and you know, maybe it's like winter time and you hate winter or something. So when we first got in, we did that. We went into the contemporary area and we each picked, I think for this one we just picked our favorite. And then so my friend who suggested that, she picked this, she picked like one, like a really colorful pop art painting. And you know, obviously she liked it because it was colorful. And then another, our other friend I think picked an Andy Warhol, and she just thought it was like, you know, intriguing. She's like, I just wonder why there's like a thousand pictures of Elizabeth Taylor, like what's his fascination with her. And then of course I picked a work by Agnes Martin, because I love her. So we kinda, kind of talked about that and it was a lot of fun. And then that kind of just, opened up a lot of other discussions, you know, why we're just drawn to certain things. And then, you know, we kind of fed off those discussions into discussing some of the other works in the gallery. And then eventually we did come across things that we didn't like, and then obviously we saw an entire white on white painting and one of my friends was just like, this is ridiculous, and that's why I don't like it, which is totally fair. And so we talked about that. But then we ended up finding like, fascinating things to talk about the white on white painting. Yeah, like it definitely opens up a lot of discussion and I, so I think like if you don't know anything, that's a really interesting game to play. What I introduced them to, which is a thing that I do a lot with gallery visitors is, I use it a strategy that's actually a strategy that's used in a lot of art museums called visual thinking strategies. Basically like you go up to a painting and, you like ask yourself a series of questions. Like you just, the questions could be what's going on going on in this picture? So like literally what you see, you know, the colors, lines, shapes, or you can say, like, I see a man or a woman or a landscape. And then you can ask questions or you can say things like, what does it remind you of? Like, you can think about other art or movies or books or music. And then you can even try to, you know, make up a story if you, if you, if it's the type of painting that, you know, or artwork that lends itself to that. And then you kind of ask, you know, why does it remind you of those things? What makes you think that this is what's happening? And then, you know, you kind of just say like, what else, what else can you find? Like, what do you find interesting? What do you find fascinating? Yeah, so again, like these questions doesn't require you to know anything about the work and there's obviously no right or wrong answers. And then I've done these tours where we just, we just do this and I don't actually tell them anything about the artworks, maybe at the very end, if someone's like really curious about like an actual fact or historic background about something we saw, I'll obviously share it. But yeah, I've done this. And sometimes you end up talking about an artwork for like an hour and you'll have no idea who painted it, like what it was about or what the subject matter is, and like why it was painted or made. So, yeah, like, I think I can, I can send you a link of some tips on, and we can put it in the show notes, of how to use visual thinking strategies, but it's, it's a really good tool. And it helps me a lot. Cause sometimes a visitor will come up and be like, tell me about this painting. And I'll be like, ah, I don't know anything. So I'm just going to start asking questions. 

Quinn: Those are really cool strategies and ways to think about art and like, like I just said, I don't know really have a lot of things to fall back on, ways that I engage with art in art museums, just besides sort of like feeling it out, reading what I can and you know, thinking about the space. And so these are very cool and I am going to try out some of these as well the next time that I go to an art museum. Great, well, I think that is a wonderful place to wrap this up. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Pictorial. I hope that you are all out there accessing art in whatever way makes the most sense to you right now. if you can't go to an art museum right now, try out some of these strategies on some art online. That could be really fun, too. In the meantime, you can find our show notes at relay.fm/pictorial. And you can also find us on Twitter or Instagram @PictorialPod. If you want to, you can find me on Twitter or Instagram @aspiringrobotfm.

Betty: And you can find me on Twitter or Instagram @articulationsV. I'm also on YouTube as ARTiculations. And speaking of YouTube we also upload some, we also upload these podcasts episodes to YouTube, you can find us at Pictorial Podcasts on YouTube. 

Quinn: Thanks for listening. art enthusiasts!