Unlocking Our Shared Humanity: Interpretation at the CMA

An art museum provides the opportunity to reflect on the most complex things about being human. Since the earliest cave paintings, artists have responded to the world, contemplating the most fundamental and culturally significant societal concerns — love, fear, anxiety, power, injustice, pride, loss, hope. Artists use a visual language to make concrete what is abstract.

This visual language, however, is not always easily understood. As viewers in a museum gallery, we may be separated from a work of art’s origin by centuries, continents, or cultural understanding. But by unlocking the shared humanity communicated and explored in art objects, we can better understand that the world is both bigger than our individual universe and that it is filled with multiple perspectives. At a time when the world is ever more global, but also increasingly insular, it is critical to grasp this simple yet profound concept.

“To interpret a work of art is to make it meaningful.” — Terry Barrett, Interpreting Art: Reflecting, Wondering and Responding

So, what does interpretation have to do with this? Interpretation is precisely what can unlock that shared humanity; interpretation is what makes a museum a museum. Without interpretation, we would simply be a storage facility for objects. Sharing the stories and layers of meaning inherent in art objects brings those objects alive. Each visitor is invited to consider what that object means to him or her — you are invited to make your own meaning.

Interpretation comes in many forms — wall labels, gallery guides, audio tours, and app content, as well as playful, interactive learning opportunities like a gondola to accompany the recent exhibition Eyewitness Views: Making History in Eighteenth-Century Europe or the Kusama Lounge, where museum guests stopped in, asked questions, browsed through books about the artist, and shared their experiences of Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors.

The interpretation department serves as an audience advocate in the content development process, ensuring that visitors will encounter multiple entry points so that regardless of level of art knowledge there is a way to make meaning of works of art. We believe there is more than one way to look at a work of art, and we want every visitor to find something that sparks his or her interest. This is why we create a range of tools to explore the collection — a “choose your own adventure” approach, if you will.

For example, for the upcoming exhibition Renaissance Splendor: Catherine de’ Medici’s Valois Tapestries, we will have a playful re-creation of a tapestry that visitors can “step into” and imagine they are part of the Valois court. If you’re a history buff and you want to get a handle on the complex de’ Medici-Valois family tree, we have a gallery guide full of bios of the key players.

If you’re into the behind-the-scenes work, a film will explain the multiyear conservation process of the tapestries. And if you like to think about how things are made, download the ArtLens app and take a virtual tour that explores tapestry weave throughout the collection.

We believe learning in the museum context is about more than acquiring facts. It is about shifting thinking, expanding understanding, and getting to a new place so we can consider the full measure of human history and our place in it.

To do this we acknowledge that we each look at art through the lens of our whole lived experience, and therefore we each experience a work of art in our own unique way. Interpretation, therefore, invites us to recognize relationships, navigate multiple meanings, invest in looking, and demonstrate curiosity from whatever point of view we have. This is how we fulfill the CMA’s mission to create transformative experiences through art, for the benefit of all the people forever.

As the keeper of objects, we, the museum, have a responsibility to share information, but when interpretation is at its best, that information opens up new pathways. By encouraging exploration and building connections in our galleries, the CMA becomes increasingly relevant and a valuable contributor to our ever-changing and diverse community. This is what an art museum can and should be — and interpretation is the way that I strive to do that each day I come to work.

Note: This is the first in a series of posts about the role of interpretation at the CMA.