At the end of college, I worked extra hours to buy a Trans World Airlines ticket and a Eurail Pass. Then, for a few weeks I wandered from campground to youth hostel where I listened to the rhythms of unfamiliar languages and music. I tried new foods, checked out grand museums, and said “Wow!” at the long-tended scenery and the time-worn stone buildings of central Europe. I also visited a beach where a family member ran ashore under enemy fire in June of 1944. Certain things I saw were revelations. For example, in a huge Vienna museum I walked into a gallery lined along both long walls with large golden clocks. So many clocks, so intricately geared and ornate, and so much gold. I pictured generations of Europeans tapping and draining the resources of distant lands and shipping them home for very gaudy displays of wealth and power. Since then, when I visit a museum, I assume that I’m about to see the workings and ornaments of privilege. And I hope at the same time that the museum has a wider agenda than that.
With that in mind, I visited the new Raclin Murphy Museum of Art on the University of Notre Dame campus here in Michiana. It’s a formal building, similar in style and scale to a good number of other campus buildings, and a large purple banners says, “Welcome to your art museum.” It’s not easy for visitors to park at Notre Dame, but I found a two-hour spot by the shops of Eddy Street Commons. On one side of the museum entrance, on four huge panels — made of Indiana limestone, I hope — in large formal letters meant to remind us of the glories of ancient Rome, are carved some questions about the nature of art. The writer proposes that artists shape their works so as to help us all reorganize and reorder the world. Since that’s very different from showing off captured treasures and golden clocks, I entered the building with renewed curiosity and hope.
I used to visit Notre Dame’s Snite Museum, now closed, so inside the new Raclin Murphy museum I saw familiar objects from the Snite and many new things too. I have some early impressions to share. First, there is no long room lined with golden clocks. Second, there are many faces in paintings, woven fabrics, and ceramics from different cultures and different centuries. Here a woman holds a puppy, nearby another woman leans into the work of grinding grain. Over there a couple stands side by side, facing forward. They feel familiar no matter how long ago they lived because one reaches around the back of the other so as to place a hand on that dear one’s hip. In another room, a large painting shows political prisoners hearing judgment being handed down upon them. Near the front of the image, we see their various reactions of turmoil and grief, while other people recede into the dark corners of the painting, vanishing because that is all that history now offers them.
After three visits, I’d say that this new museum, like many others, does offer works that celebrate familiar signs of wealth, power, and privilege. But I also felt many playful artists shaped the materials at hand for other purposes. Most often, I recognized this in the bold lines and colors, and in portraits that are fresh tributes to our shared humanity. I will go back for the faces, the dramatic lines, the celebrations of color and form. You can have your golden clocks and your ancient hierarchies, if that’s what you want.
A museum is usually a mixed blessing. Strands of history in the art works still need to be questioned and overthrown, to be reordered and reorganized, as the limestone outside the front door promises. Many of the works inside celebrate the freedom to play and imagine a world made otherwise. Good museums don’t tend to teach us how to get to that freer, more just and playful world, but they insist that we imagine it.
Music: "Wrong Foot Forward" by Flook
