Behind Closed Doors

The KMA is not large, with two spacious main galleries on the first floor and additional exhibition space on the second. To the visitor, a closed gallery can be a serious disappointment, since it effectively reduces the size of the museum by a third or more. But exhibitions come and exhibitions go, since cycling through the museum's collection and bringing in traveling exhibitions from outside sources are both integral parts of the museum experience. Each time this happens, gallery doors must close for up to several weeks at a time.

Sometimes, however, in the process of moving things in and out, these closed doors are left ajar, and this is when something special often happens. A museum visitor, usually hesitantly, will peek inside. "Excuse me, sorry, is this gallery closed?"

If nothing especially pressing is going on at that moment, I will generally explain that technically the gallery is closed for installation, but that they are welcome to take a quick look at what we're putting up.

What follows are some of the most rewarding, engaging, interesting interactions that I ever have with museum patrons. I'm not sure why this is so. Perhaps it makes people feel like a VIP, seeing something behind-the-scenes. Perhaps it's just that anybody who takes the initiative to ask about a seemingly-closed gallery is likely to be enthusiastic about what they find.

My best guess is that both of these are true, but that it's something more as well. There is a dynamism in the working space that is the gallery-during-installation. The art might be poorly lit, leaned haphazardly against walls at floor level, certainly in no order that could be called a good presentation. And yet it seems more alive than when it's hanging neatly on a gallery wall, a cold spotlight trained upon it just so. Here is art once again in cooperation with humans, being handled, being thought about in the most concrete ways. Where does this item go? How will this task be executed? In spirit, it is a partial return to the artist's workshop, a recovery of the act of creation: in the set-up of a gallery, works of art are born again.

I think that our visitors sense this, and that is what draws them to galleries under installation. It may not be the best way to view art, but it is a unique way to participate in the experience of art.