THE docent began the tour by taking us to the second floor landing of the museum as snow fell gently on the famous lawn outside, beckoning with its placid rhythm and complete lack of artifice.
The guide stopped at a glass case. In the case was a mannequin clothed in what appeared to be old, knitted afghan doilies, the sort of things that sit around on sofas and tables for many years in humble homes — not bad in the right place, but not treasured by anyone as visual masterpieces.
The artist, we are informed, has created similar suits for museums across the country (another way of saying he is a millionaire.) He was inspired in this work by his desire to create a second skin for himself — a protective suit that would enable him to escape racism and the evils of class and gender. He wanted a suit that would entirely insulate him from these scourges and that also made interesting crinkly sounds because he was a “multimedia artist” and performer.
We stood speechless before this afghan-covered shaman. I felt reverence and awe — awe for the immense power of propaganda. I was not surprised the enthusiastic female guide chose to take us here first. I don’t know what the other participants were thinking, if they were thinking at all, but I was fantasizing about what it’s like to make lots of money collecting old, cheap doilies in thrift shops and creating suits out of them. It can’t be that hard to do and might potentially make for a very comfortable and happy life, but no one would make lots of money doing this unless he fell into a certain privileged racial category and class. Our artist had, of course, the proper biological credentials. So the suit, as it turned out, was not only not pleasing to the eye, it did not insulate anyone from the scourge of racism.
Oh, racism! How you plague the museum curator! On the one hand, she must bow to the dogmas of equality because that is her religion and the whole reason she took all those boring courses to get this job. On the other hand, she is surrounded in the museum’s vast and stunning collections with proof that equality does not exist. That’s a terrible bind, you have to admit.
To escape this dilemma, she and her volunteer guides, her fellow deacons at the altars of art, resort to piety and hoaxes.
The suit’s placement at the beginning of the tour was an act of piety, intended to cleanse visitors to the museum of any attraction to beauty itself. The modern museum must acclimate its visitors to ugliness because ugliness breaks down barriers in the mind between truth and falsehood. If you can get someone to say something ugly is beautiful, if you can get someone to enjoy ugliness, you have acclimated him to lying and can get him to believe in your religion, even if it is based on absurdities.
Fortified with this hoax, we moved on to view artworks that in some cases were inspiringly beautiful, but were, unfortunately, guilty pleasures, inherently evil because they represented cultures and peoples that did not hate themselves.
How long can they last? I often ask myself this. How long can they last? The barbarians are at the gate, their torches are lit, and the guards want nothing more than to let them in.
