Over the years we've bombarded
you with pics of stanchions, barriers and pine cones (true) being used to
protect art works, sometimes ruining them, sometimes adding a hilarious new
dimension. Art museums have another weapon to keep us away from their art:
guards. We’ve already had a look at their reading choices and the move from
books to phones, but how about the aesthetics of minding.
Here’s one photo
taken by us at the Shanghai Biennale of a guard completely unaware that the
video he is protecting has long since stopped playing along with two images
from Andy Freeburg’s book Guardians ofthe Russian Museums. This wonderful collection of photographs suggests that
guards become like the pictures they attend, something like people and their
dogs. It was Freeburg who made our favourite art people photographs, the top of
dealer gallery staffers' heads poking up above hefty reception counters. As for
our favourite guard response to someone actually trying to touch something?
Still got to be from the movie Night at the museum: battle of the Smithsonian,
“How dare you! If you touch that again I shall kill you right now.”
Images: Top, Shanghai Biennale guard. Bottom, woman guarding art in
Moscow’s State Tretyakov Gallery photographed by Andy Freeburg.
