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You have to admit Te Papa is a leader in its field when it comes to museological opportunism (MO). One minute you think it’s going to take the job of showing our art culture seriously and then, before you know it, it’s making an out-of-left-field panicky effort to not fall behind in the audience attention arms race. OK, these completely stupid ideas no doubt come from the Marketing Department but hey, there are highly educated and highly paid curatorial staff in the building. So we now find the team who affected high indignation at the idea of barriers in front of a Milan Mrkusich painting, now thinking that an x–marks-the-spot-for-a-selfie concept with a Gretchen Albrecht painting is totally awesome (TA).
“I've something I want to quickly run by the curators,” you can hear someone important growl at a Te Papa meeting. “Anyone have a problem with us encouraging people to stand with their backs to the art and take a pic of themselves with it as a background? Sensitivity towards the artist issues? Safety concerns? Copyright? No? Brilliant.”
Image: Gretchen Albrecht’s 2011 painting In a shower of gold gets the selfie treatment. (thanks Z)
