A few weeks ago, my wife and I attended an event at a local art gallery.
I had not visited an art gallery in a long time.
The purpose of this post is to explore a question.
It may seem like a question about art—in fact I will use the expression of art as the basis of the question—but I think this question has much broader implications.
Before we explore the question, let's think about the difference between an art gallery and a museum.
This is not the question I want to explore, but it will help set us up for the question: Why do we go to an art gallery and why do we go to a museum?
I'm sure we can throw out many answers, but let's use a simple one: We go to a museum to learn something and we go to an art gallery to feel something.
As another small delay tactic before getting to the question, let me just make a distinction between learning and feeling.
Learning can involve words and often involves putting those words into a broader context.
Feeling, initially at least, does not involve words at all.
Ok, enough preamble, now let's get to this question I've been talking about.
It's really a question for you, dear reader.
Imagine you visited an art gallery.
The question is, would you like the curator to give you a tour of some of the pieces and tell you more about them? Specifically, what the artist was trying to convey?
Or, would you like to explore the gallery on your own, without any narration by a curator?
You can't cheat and say, "It depends."
Really, just go with your gut and make a choice: Curator or no curator.
***
There is no right answer.
For the rest of this post, I want to make a case for why I'm a "no curator" person. If you are that too, then please read on to fill your quota of confirmation bias for the day. If you are not that person, then please read on because understanding an opinion that's different from your own is a healthy way to challenge confirmation bias.
My main argument against a curator is that getting to experience the purity of a feeling is a beautiful thing.
There's a line from one of my favourite novels, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, at a moment when the main character is standing at a lookout on a mountain:
This is the hardest stuff in the world to photograph. You need a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree lens, or something. You see it, and then you look down in the round glass and it’s just nothing. As soon as you put a border on it, it’s gone.
The art gallery curator's words, regardless of how poetic, are that border to me.
Interestingly, any words, the curator's or even my own, are that border to me.
I am seeking the moment before a border gets put around a thing.
These moments are often fleeting, because as adults we have a strange desire to want to explain things. To learn. To put words to things and then put those words into a broader context.
It's that rare moment when we get to experience the purity of a feeling in its entirety.
Eventually, when we begin to put a border (our own or someone else's) around the feeling, we can come to understand ourselves a bit better.
Until then, try staying borderless.
Feel how it feels.
