On “Art History and the ‘Blockbuster’ Exhibition”

Abstract

I have read with great interest the Editor's remarks on art history and the “blockbuster” exhibition in the September issue (LXVIII, 358–59). I should like to indicate that, in my dual role of art historian and museum curator, I see much sound sense in your observations on the “blockbuster” exhibition and its possible — or actual — negative effects. These effects need not be assessed against the so-called “blockbuster” only: any program of exhibitions, whatever their dimensions, that overburdens a museum's curatorial staff will impair that staff's ability to fulfill its primary obligation, to the permanent collection; it is also a matter of concern to me that the attention not only of the museum's curators but of its public be too often and too insistently displaced from the collections to the transient exhibitions.