Passage V

Putting More Art on Display

[1]

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) in New York City divides its art collection into many departments, all of which have extensive gallery space. For example, the large American Decorative Arts department has twenty-five fully furnished rooms in the museum, each in a different architectural style. Visitors can see a reception room from before the American Revolutionary War and a living room from 1915 designed, by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. After all, these rooms are only a small portion of the collection of American Decorative Arts and an even smaller portion, of the Met’s entire collection.

[2]

Artwork that isn’t on display gets relegated to out-of-the-way storage areas where the art stays until it is exhibited. Variations in light, humidity, and temperature can damage the art. To stabilize the environmental conditions and open their stored collections to visitors, a growing number of museums are adopting a new way of storing artwork called “visual storage.” This type of storage, unlike the space found in gallery exhibits, crowds many artifacts in glass cases or hangs artwork close together on walls.

[3]

The American Decorative Arts department at the Met store most of its collection in the Luce Center; in the American Wing of the museum. Any visitor can walk through and see items grouped by category such as, glass, ceramics, oil paintings, woodwork, and furniture. Information about each item is available in the Luce Center on the visitor computers in the center.

[4]

The Met is basic in limiting the amount of artwork publicly displayed in its galleries. Art museums usually display less than 10 percent of their artwork at any one time. (72) So what happens to a piece of art when it isn’t on display in a museum?

[5]

Rather than being hidden, artworks such as cupboards from 1680 or vases from 1900 are now accessible for visitors to study or simply enjoy. Visual storage, at the Met and other museums protects the art and benefits the community by moving art from closed vaults to the public eye.