Mario is My Lonesome Cowboy...

Mario is “My Lonesome Cowboy”… if you have recently visited the excellent “Pop Life” exhibit at the National Gallery… you’ll know exactly what I mean.

The curators did a superb job choosing and exhibiting from a variety of collections and artists– centred around a multiplicity of themes.  Leaving the gallery, I had a new appreciation for pop-art (except for perhaps Jeff Koons).

The exhibit had some great stuff: from Takashi Murakami, Damien Hirst, Andy Warhol, Maurizio Cattelan, and others.  Despite this fantastic exhibit, one of the disconcerting elements of the gallery is its mismanagement.  The overseers of the gallery, in their magnanimity, have decided to secure funding from both the government, through a redistribution of taxes, and through the collection of admissions from Canadian citizens and sojournists.  The money is seemingly wasted on guards, which are situated in nearly every room.

I know the guards are simply doing their jobs and I want to avoid critiquing them, but frankly they ruin the experience.  They do not blend in– from their black fascismo uniforms to their oafish surveillance techniques.  They furtively follow you around, watching you as you watch the art… until, of course, you are deemed to be yet another boring patron, whereafter they return to their perch… awaiting the next group of recently debited aesthetes.  Beyond the guards you will also find nearly every room has a closed circuit surveillance system–  both seem grossly unnecessary.

My appreciation for the management of the gallery may be attenuated from my experience, and I sincerely apologize if guards were foisted upon the gallery by the government as an impotent attempt at pork-barrelling.  The fact remains that this is both wasteful, and counter to the concept of a public gallery…  you may as well handcuff patrons, and put all the art behind bars… or redesign the gallery so that it becomes a disney-style ride on rails… whoever is to blame, turning a gallery in to a panopticon serves no-one.   Finally, the gallery minus special exhibitions should be free to Canadian citizens– this could probably be accomplished through the reduction of spending on wages.  The upshot is that patrons would be able to enjoy the exhibits without the feeling of being on exhibit themselves.