Museums and other lives
Museums are getting increasingly self-conscious about the artificialities they embody. Even if they can stave off the claim that objects collected through wealth and conquest ought to be sent home again they are showing more recognition that taking things from their original settings destroys an important part of their meaning.
Generations less well-travelled than ours may not have felt so strongly about this loss, but now that there is a country house open round every corner and it is possible to take a weekend in Venice like going to the sea for the day, it is much harder to return to the contrived world of the museum – furniture divorced from the rooms it once filled, church art shown with none of the liturgy for which it was made, and machines standing silent under glass. Sophisticated display and labelling, however well intentioned, often seems to come between the object and viewer to heighten the unnatural effect yet more.
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