Unless they’re young ones.

A review of Rauschenberg, with no mention of Cornell, makes me think about how criticism works. Can a critic ever be a lumper without seeming to compare and contrast; a splitter, without seeming to ignore and dismiss?

Or should I be looking instead to the curators and galleries, who strive to keep each object a facet of a disconnected miscellany?

I would visit a tagged art or history or culture museum. I’m tired of long glass cases with extracted artificial “themes”: decades, ethnic groups, geographic regions, materials, decorative vs. fine arts.

A museum should be like a Cornell box, an antique mall, a cabinet of curiosities, a Rauschenberg collage. As it stands, too many curators and critics are merely the janitors of semiotics.

(Via 3quarksdaily.)