Discourse in Art History

In a postmodern world, the knowledge of the museum, the academia, and other institutions are considered one branch of knowledge and language. There is no longer a narration that provides any answers or truisms in the art world because we live in a world with too many choices. In the readings this week, I had was more reserved and critical in the authors' knowledge of the museum and art because I realized the text did not encompass a totalitarian viewpoint. This positive truism I was seeking when I originally started my studies in art history is not dead but has never existed from the days of Vasari all the way to the present day.

With the readings of postmodernism in mind, The Postcolonial Constellation article written by Okwui Enzewor seeks to degrade the renewed vision of the Tate Museum in London. Through all of his finger-pointing and critiquing of the Tate continuing to exhibit in a modernist fashion, Enzewor has forgotten where he is received his training within the arts. Being born in Nigeria does not mean that Enzewor's knowledge is composed of eastern or indigeneous thoughts from his native African homeland. In reality, Enzewor has received a Western education that had defined Modernism during the beginning of the Enlightenment. For Enzewor to berate and attack the Tate Museum is to discount his own education. If it was not for the Western thinking and training in which Enzewor was so privileged to receive, he would never have had the ability to write this article, teach at the University of Pittsburgh, and, presently, be the president of the San Francisco Art Institute. Although we need to look at and analyze art outside the scope of art history and into the realm of cultural, political, religious, and social contexts, it is hypocritical for Enzewor to relegate the exhibitioning of art inside the context of the history of art.

On the other hand, I did enjoy Eilean Hopper-Greenhill's article on What is a Museum? as it discusses the knowledge of the museum within the context of art history. Although museum's have contributed to the commodification of the art object, it has created one form of knowledge that has contributed to the public's education of art. The fact that museums are now being critically looked at and studied is now helping to bring to light the fact that the museum is not the absolute ruler in the judgment of art and its histories, but that it is one source of knowledge within the discourses of a postmodern world. However, the general public has been limited by their art historical knowledge because of the hegemony of the museum as the supreme authority figure. The museum, as the Panopticon, has controlled the surveillance and identities of artists within the different movements of art. But as Foucault points out, there is discourse outside of the museum, such as political and cultural contexts, that remove any chance of their being a universal truth being offerned by the museum. We are made aware that knowledge is composed of factors outside the history of art as defined by the museum, curators, and catalogs that attempt to authenticate their knowledge as being on top of the institutional hierarchy. Therefore, we need to continue an institutional critique of the museum until it accepts historical, social, and cultural contexts with an equal status to aesthetics in order to increase knowledge. However, in postmodernism, there is no way to provide the positive truism that aesthetics and connoiseurship seeks to comfortably provide.