Contextual

Emil Nolde’s Mulatto is exhibited currently in the Sackler Museum of Harvard University, and was previously exhibited as a part of the Busch-Reisinger collection. With the closing of the Fogg Museum and Busch-Reisinger for renovation, some art works have been moved into the Sackler to create the best representation of the museum’s complete collection. The relatively small size of the museum and the importance of the art works in exhibition give the museum a special character. Due to this density of important works surrounding Nolde’s Mulatto, the viewer engages in an unconscious process of comparative appreciation of the artwork. It is exhibited in the middle of Ernst’s ‘Untitled’ and Leger’s ‘Composition’, two works of very different character and style. 

Although I have been unable to find information about the specific creation process of Nolde’s Mulatto, it is safe to assume that this painting was targeted for museum-exhibition. I have two main reasons for this assumption: First, I was unable to find any information indicating that this painting was commissioned by someone or that it was ever privately owned. Second, this painting carries many similarities to other paintings by Nolde painted around the same time (subject, style, etc.), therefore, it is very likely that he intended these to be a series, exhibited together to demonstrate his stylistic and thematic trends in the period of their execution. Proceeding with this assumption, I wanted to bring in some relevant thoughts from a paper I had previously written on museums and museology.* 

A museum is a microcosm – a world of its own, the constant re-writing of art history and an experiment in concept formation and categorization.  When a visitor walks its symbolically charged spaces, built on deliberate decisions about how to position material things in the context of others, a new narrative of art is enacted. 

Museums make experiential and contextual efforts that create active and evolving spaces where the human tendency to categorize is tested against “a number of factors including the existing divisions between objects, the particular curatorial practices of the specific institution, the physical condition of the material object, and the interests, enthusiasms, and expertise of the curator in question. “(Hooper-Greenhill 6) Foucault, in an attempt to connect this observation about constraints factoring in the narrative of art to a universal truth, exclaims: “Truth is of the world: it is produced by virtue of multiple constraints.” (Foucault 13) Museums are constructed from an array of spatial, idiosyncratic and cognitive factors. Although subject to many constraints and changing circumstances, some museums create compelling stories of art and important cases for study of museology. Sackler is what we might term a meta-museum, a segmented museum of museology, simultaneously exhibiting a collection of art works and different modes of categorization and presentation.

Sources:

* Bereketli, Ezgi, “A Visit to the Sackler Museum: A tour of art historical methods of categorization, their cognitive explanations, potential problems and alternatives” Paper written for Expos 20, Spring 2009

Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences. New York:, 1973.

---. "The Political Function of the Intellectual." Radical Philosophy.17 (1977): 12-4.

Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean. Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge /. London ;; New York : Routledge, 1992.

--> Sackler Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

--> Students exploring the first floor galleries of modern and contemporary art in Sackler Museum.


(image sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sackler_Museum,_Harvard_University.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/harvardartmuseum/7845933366/in/photostream/)