A Museum’s Plea for Viewer Engagement: Tender Loving Care

Brielle Telfair

Instructor’s Introduction

Written for my WR120 class, “Art and Social Justice in Boston Now,” Brielle Telfair’s essay “A Museum’s Plea for Engagement: Tender Loving Care” thoughtfully connects to our course’s focus on how art intersects with topics of place, identity, and community. In this essay, Brielle considers how one of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) current exhibitions challenges display conventions in order to more dynamically engage viewers. In the course, students explore both museum exhibitions and public art in Boston, and they consider how artists and art spaces respond to challenges of justice, identity, and inclusion. Inside museums, rarely are viewers explicitly recognized as integral to art’s meaning, yet–as Brielle shows us–art is fundamentally relational. In the MFA,Tender Loving Care: Contemporary Art From the Collection centers the labor and care that goes into both an artist’s and viewer’s process. Brielle describes the effects of the MFA’s unconventional exhibition design in this space (e.g., wall color, object placement, bench artworks, and QR codes) in order to clarify the museum’s capacity to challenge its own entrenched history of treating viewers as detached observers. But Brielle also brilliantly clarifies what can be missed or lost in the curatorial decision to omit explanatory wall text in physical proximity to the artworks. When information about an artist’s identities and relevant context remains accessible only through a QR code or a book located at the entry or exit points of the space, many viewers might miss crucial details that could further connect them to issues of identity, history, and social justice that extend far beyond the museum walls. With excellent visual and spatial analysis, and through careful recognition of the museum as a contested site of display, Brielle brings us into a nuanced examination of contemporary art, community, and the spaces that both shape and respond to the world around us.

Caitlin Dalton

From the Writer

Museums, as homes for artwork, play an almost contradictory role in the public’s connection to art. Not only are they one of the most common modes for viewing art, they are also integral in the art world’s isolation from the public as well. A museum can render an artwork as both accessible and inaccessible. Through a case study of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts Tender Loving Care exhibition, I look at how centering the museum visitor rather than the artwork can resolve this conflict. In what ways can changes—big and small—in seating, plaques, and exhibition design increase our connection to art? What began as an investigation of a unique gallery became a signifier of a possible shift in the role of museums and their visitors.

A Museum’s Plea for Viewer Engagement: Tender Loving Care

What do we see when we imagine a museum? Do we picture the iconic pyramid of the Louvre or the spiral of the Solomon R. Guggenheim? We could enter through the doors and envision pristine white walls lined with artwork where sculptures are protected by glass cases marked with do-not-touch signs. Or, we might concentrate on the artwork within the museum itself. The Louvre could be defined by the Mona Lisa. The painting itself could also be defined by the walls that protect it. Would we ever imagine a museum as a place of care and connection—a space that is more than just a home for artwork? An exhibition of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Tender Loving Care: Contemporary Art from the Collection, claims to be just that: a place “where people and ideas of many kinds are tended to” rather than a place “where artworks come for safekeeping.”¹ This declaration recognizes one important part all our images of museums should include: the people. Integral to museums are the staff who run and curate them, the artists who create the artwork displayed, and the people who visit them. Museums play a crucial role in shaping the public’s perception of the art world. In “One Place After Another: Notes on Site Specificity,” Miwon Kwon describes the museum as a carefully controlled environment.² Many artists within the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, such as Daniel Buren, Hans Haacke, Andrea Fraser, or Fred Wilson, have explicitly critiqued museums as a part of an institution. More broadly, more and more people are recognizing art museums as sites that impact viewer engagement, which reciprocally impacts the artwork and its dynamic meaning. By centering people and their ideas, the Tender Loving Care exhibition appears to shift away from museums’ influence on art. It could represent a larger shift in art institutions and how art is displayed. Tender Loving Care is exemplary of how a museum’s increasing recognition of the museum-going public can foster, hinder, and change viewer engagement in artwork.

Previously, we imagined an exhibition as a pristine and white-walled place. The Museum of Fine Arts’s Tender Loving Care exhibition builds its own unique identity from these qualities. The white is accented by yellows and lilacs. The room itself is a long, rectangular hallway divided into sections by floor-to-ceiling mustard yellow curtains. These curtains curve, circling the artwork and acting as both a partition and a backdrop. The curtains help divide the space into six sections, such as “Threads” and “Vibrant Matter.” While their descriptions are written in a booklet available in the gallery, glass plates with artists’ quotes written in cursive hang throughout the room. These details set Tender Loving Care apart from other exhibitions, including others within the Museum of Fine Arts. Its identity is welcoming, visually appealing, and soft. Yellow itself is considered a happy color, and the curtains guide the viewer through the exhibit gently and slowly. The visitor can feel comfortable with the artwork around them, better allowing them to engage with it. They can look at the pieces without feeling rushed or overwhelmed. To add onto this is the presence of seating, which not only cares for the museum visitor but changes the visitor’s relationship with the artwork and room around them.

Benches are an unremarkable feature of all museums. It would be more surprising for a museum to have none of them than to have many. However, the variety of chairs within Tender Loving Care play a role beyond being a place to sit. Many are fashioned out of wood, some are green fuzzy bean bags, and one reads: “Museum visits are hard on my body. Rest here if you agree” (fig 1). Each one is a member of the museum’s “Please Be Seated” program, which aims to change the observational relationship of viewing art into one of active participation since it began in 1975.³ Beneath each bench is a label that reads: “I am an artwork… take a seat but be gentle with me.”⁴ Proclaiming that they are artwork is the most significant part of the benches. By sitting down, the museum visitor physically interacts with art. In a way, it is the viewer who, in the words of art historian Claire Bishop, “completes the work’s precarious physical identity.”⁵ No longer is the museum visitor a third party looking into the art world, instead they are an embodied part of that world itself. Within this world are other artworks and people. The benches, through engagement with them, connect the viewer to the artwork they are seeing on a deeper level. Throughout my visit, I saw numerous interactions on them. People sat and discussed the art with one another. According to Bishop’s reading of Nicolas Bourriaud, one critical way that artwork engages with the viewer is through “relational aesthetics.” These artworks highlight and spark human interaction and relationships.⁶The Please Be Seated benches do this by emphasizing the community and connection between the museum visitors. This serves to transform the exhibition from a space centered around solely the artist and artwork to a space centered around the art viewer.

While in this space, a frequent museum-goer may be shocked to see that it lacks common informational plaques. One cannot find the labels typically seen near an artwork that list the artist, materials, dimensions, and perhaps a bit of context about the piece. Towards the center of the gallery, a sign even asks “Looking for labels?” One must scan a QR code to find the typically readily available information. With this system, it is easier for the viewer to form their thoughts about the artwork. By invoking Bishop’s characterization of certain artistic projects as critical platforms for thinking about issues and sites, the artwork becomes political. Although Bishop primarily writes about installation art, all art forms can be political through their “literal inclusion of the viewer” and calls for critical thinking.⁷ The lack of labels removes a perspective that museums typically ask the viewer to consider. The viewer must actively seek to know the artist and their goals, rather than being given them. The artwork can be interpreted and interacted with solely through the eyes of the individual. It allows them to ask questions and make their own decisions. They can explore the artworks’ meanings as something cohesive, or see each artwork individually. However, the removed perspective is still important to viewer engagement.

Although Tender Loving Care strives to create an environment that allows the viewer to engage and connect with artwork, aspects of the space itself act to hinder that goal. There are two major obstructions present: the aforementioned lack of labels and the exhibition’s existence within a museum in the first place. The name of the artist, the title of the artwork, the date it was created, and many other pieces of information about the artwork’s impetus, the events surrounding its creation, or even the details about the materials provide important context for the art we see in museums. This additional knowledge can be the basis of viewer engagement and connection to the artwork and the artist. When that context is removed, that level of connection is no longer possible. For example, Nick Cave’s Soundsuit stands proudly within the exhibition’s Threads section. With a curved top that completely obscures the head, it looks like a strange outfit. The entirety of its black fabric is covered in multicolored sequins that form a mosaic of different patterns, including a black and white flower with silver, gold, and purple chains underneath (fig. 2). The Museum of Fine Arts describes the works within the Threads section as: “transforming [threads] into markers of people, places, time, and ideas;” it highlights the importance of fabric and keeping people warm and cared for.⁸ What the viewer would not know is that Nick Cave is African American. Beyond this, they would not know that police brutality, specifically the beating of Rodney King in 1991 inspired the production of the first of hundreds of Soundsuits.⁹

Further, the Soundsuits are not only meant to be seen but are meant to be worn. Nick Cave sees them as suits of armor. By obscuring the identity of the wearer, they become empowered. Nick Cave felt that within the suits “you couldn’t tell if I was a man or a woman; if I was black, red, green, or orange; from Haiti or South Africa.”¹⁰ The Soundsuit’s act of care is being a shield from all judgment. The curving head of the Soundsuit is reminiscent of symbols of power: a pope’s miter hat or a missile head.¹¹ Cave reckons with how people of color and other marginalized communities are disrespected and brutalized. But, the average visitor of Tender Loving Care does not receive this information. They are left with a sequined costume and what they can take away from its appearance. The gallery does not refuse them this information; it is still present if they choose to seek it. But will they? The connection the information could have formed if it was offered more readily is lost. In a way, Nick Cave’s message in the Soundsuit has been reduced to its surface aesthetics by the gallery. It is an artwork of care, but the gallery does not explore it beyond that.

One could argue that the labels are still readily available. However, research has shown that the average museum-goer spends 15-30 seconds with a single piece of art.¹² Unless the artwork’s appearance grabbed the person’s attention enough, it is unlikely that they would scan the QR code and scroll to find the artwork’s and artist’s name. The most common viewer is still deprived of the context for the artworks around them.

Being able to connect to the artist in terms of identity or subject matter is an important aspect of viewer engagement, particularly for pieces whose physical appearance do not coincide with their meaning. Understanding the context of Nick Cave’s Soundsuits elevates them above art that simply “express[es] concepts … people care about, like beauty, community ties and cultural affiliations” as Tender Loving Care’s wall text states.¹³ As argued by public policy professor Michael O’Hare, the way someone experiences a piece of artwork changes when they know who it was made by. He asserts that the goal of all museums should be better engagement with artwork, recognizing the strong influence museums have on how art is experienced.¹⁴ The influence that museums have is not lost with Tender Loving Care but is only presented differently.

Miwon Kwon’s concept of the museum as a highly controlled environment is still present within Tender Loving Care and the exhibitions around it. Kwon further explores the site as both a physical location and a cultural framework that changes how artwork is understood.¹⁵ She argues that museums, beyond being a physical home for artwork, “actively disassociate the space of art from the outer world, furthering the institution’s idealist imperative rendering of itself and its hierarchization of values ‘objective,’ ‘disinterested,’ and ‘true.’”¹⁶ Despite Tender Loving Care’s attempts to be a place of care, which in many ways it is, it cannot separate itself from its institutional background. Michelle Millar Fisher, one of the curators of Tender Loving Care recognizes this fact herself. Tender Loving Care was created with numerous things in mind, including the visitor, but also funding, museum administration, and the museum’s history as an institution.¹⁷ The intention of the curators and the museum administration behind them permeates into the way viewers engage with the artwork. The exhibition, as stated by Miwon Kwon, acts as a “culturally specific situation” that “generat[es] particular expectations and narratives regarding art and art history.”¹⁸ This situation becomes a lens through which the viewer must look, due to their presence within the space. Tender Loving Care shapes the viewer’s experience into something specific. Each artwork was specifically chosen from the Museum of Fine Arts collection to be in the exhibition. Their presence and display make it so the viewer engages with the artwork with care in mind.

Michael O’Hare offers strategies for museums to reach what he believes is their ultimate goal: improving engagement with art. Some include displaying more artwork from their collection, selling artwork to smaller institutions so more work can be shown, and offering educational programs.¹⁹ Though not using any of these strategies, the Museum of Fine Arts still represents a shift in museums as a site towards this goal. Tender Loving Care acting as a place of care is able to change viewer engagement with art for the better. Depending on the gallery’s success, this change could signify a change in other exhibitions and museums. This would alter a significant part of people’s connections to the art world. It could mean a lowering of the pristine white walls as barriers. Perhaps museums will become a place where art is not separated from the social world, but immersed in it. Rather than people entering the art world, perhaps the art world will enter greater society. Even further, it could mean a future where the museum-goer has more say in what parts of the museum collection are seen, how they are shown, and what they mean. The way we imagine an art museum in the future is likely to change.

¹“Works in the Exhibition,” Museum of Fine Arts, accessed November 10, 2023, https://www.mfa.org/exhibition/tender-loving-care/works-in-the-exhibition?utm_source=direct&utm_medium=qr-code#threads

²Miwon Kwon, “One Place After Another: Notes on Site Specificity” October 80 (Spring 1997): 88.

³“Tender Loving Care,” Museum of Fine Arts, accessed November 9, 2023, https://www.mfa.org/exhibition/tender-loving-care

⁴Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Wall Text), Hank Gilpin’s Bench (1999), Ives Family Gallery, accession no. 1999.505.

⁵Claire Bishop, “Activated Spectatorship,” in Installation Art: A Critical History (New York: Routledge, 2005), 115.

⁶Bishop, “Activated Spectatorship,” 116.

⁷Bishop, “Activated Spectatorship,” 102.

⁸“Works in the Exhibition.”

⁹Megan O’Grady, “Nick Cave.”

¹⁰Jori Finkel, “I Dream the Clothing Electric,” New York Times, March 31, 2009, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/arts/design/05fink.html

¹¹Megan O’Grady, “Nick Cave.”

¹²Stephanie Rosenbloom, “The Art of Slowing Down in a Museum,” New York Times, October 9, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/travel/the-art-of-slowing-down-in-a-museum.html.

¹³“Works in the Exhibition.”

¹⁴Michael O’Hare, “Museums Can Change – Will They?,” last modified March 24, 2015, https://gspp.berkeley.edu/research-and-impact/news/recent-news/museums-can-changewill-they.

¹⁵Kwon, “Site Specificity,” 87.

¹⁶Kwon, “Site Specificity,” 88.

¹⁷“Many Hands,” Museum of Fine Arts, accessed November 9, 2023, video, 1:46, https://www.mfa.org/video/tender-loving-care-many-hands.

¹⁸Kwon, “Site Specificity,” 89.

¹⁹O’Hare, “Museums can Change.”

Figures

Works Cited

Bishop, Claire. “Activated Spectatorship.” In Installation Art: A Critical History, 102-127. New York: Routledge, 2005.

Finkel, Jori. “I Dream the Clothing Electric.” New York Times, March 31, 2009. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/arts/design/05fink.html

Kwon, Miwon. “One Place After Another: Notes on Site Specificity.” October 80 (Spring 1997): 85-110.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Wall Text). Hank Gilpin’s Bench (1999). In “Tender Loving Care: Contemporary Art from the Collection” (exhibition), July 2023 – July 2025.

———. “Many Hands.” Accessed November 9, 2023. Video, 1:46. https://www.mfa.org/video/tender-loving-care-many-hands.

———. “Tender Loving Care.” Accessed November 9, 2023, https://www.mfa.org/exhibition/tender-loving-care.

———. “Works in the Exhibition.” Accessed November 10, 2023. https://www.mfa.org/exhibition/tender-loving-care/works-in-the-exhibition?utm_source=dir ect&utm_medium=qr-code#threads

O’Grady, Megan. “Nick Cave.” New York Times, October 18, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/15/t-magazine/nick-cave-artist.html

O’Hare, Michael. “Museums Can Change – Will They?.” Last modified March 24, 2015. https://gspp.berkeley.edu/research-and-impact/news/recent-news/museums-can-changewill-t hey.

Rosenbloom, Stephanie. “The Art of Slowing Down in a Museum.” New York Times, October 9, 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/travel/the-art-of-slowing-down-in-a-museum.html

Brielle Telfair is a rising sophomore from Virginia studying Biology. Having always had a love for both STEM and the humanities, much of her life has been spent in museums. She took professor Caitlin Dalton’s WR120 course on Social Justice & Art in Boston to cut through her science heavy schedule. She would like to thank Dalton for helping her immerse herself into Boston’s art scene.