Narrator: Why can’t I touch art?
Well, because you might smash a delicate sculpture.
Or ruin an antique, priceless canvas.
But also because of the cumulative, chemical effects of the oils, dirt, and sweat in your fingers over time.
However, emerging forms of art are beginning to increasingly encourage participation
across the senses.
So, why can't I touch art?
Or, how does the shifting world of art
mean that sometimes, you can?
Conservation staff do touch art all the time.
Kirsten Dunne: I probably touch art almost every single day.
Graeme Gollan: Sometimes hundreds of times a day
Kirsten Dunne: Trying to understand the condition of an artwork, touch is a really important
part of that. You can tell a lot of information from your fingertips.
Narrator: Artwork is so delicate that quick changes in humidity, heat and light levels
can rapidly age it.
Kirsten Dunne: Preservation of our collection
is the forefront of what we do as an organisation, and we’re-
all gallery staff are involved in that to some extent.
So, an acceptable starting point for a discussion around lifespan for our collection
is 500 years.
Narrator: So, in order to preserve a watercolour painting for 500 years
it tends to be displayed in the region of two years per decade.
Whereas with a Japanese print, which uses highly light sensitive colourants,
that can be displayed for more like eight months per decade, or even less.
More recent work is actually more vulnerable because of a drop in the quality of available
art materials. The longevity of modern paper is a good example.
Graeme Gollan: The problem came when wood started being used – 19th century predominantly.
So when we realised you could chemically treat it, and it would become paper
that’s when the problem started.
Older paper, I would say up to the mid to late-18th century is all high quality.
Kirsten Dunne: Titian, Michaelangelo, Raphael, they’re all working with permanence in mind,
they’re working with really high quality materials, made really well.
Narrator: That’s because early paper was made with pure linen, cotton, and hemp
with no impurities.
Graeme Gollan: So there’s an inherent strength.
Anything modern today, unless it’s really high end, handmade paper, will be poorish quality.
If we get 100 years, we’ll be doing well.
Narrator: With recent work so delicate, it’s essential to limit cumulative human touch
- and methods of doing so vary from gallery to gallery.
Lucy Askew: It’s our job as a curator to be that kind of mediator between the artist,
the artwork, and the audience. And we’re there to make sure that each of those components can
happily co-exist.
Keith Hartley: It’s a matter of judgement really.
Holly Prentice: Because the last thing you want is a big barrier.
We don’t want to be shouting at anyone saying:
You want the visitor to feel comfortable.
Lucy Askew: We hope that people will find a way of enjoying the work that they find
in the building without having that physical interaction.
Keith Hartley: Can you just use your eyes, rather than use your fingers.
Narrator: Gallery designers have a tricky balance to maintain.
Physical barriers can create an intimidating atmosphere,
but at the same time they can add a kind of gravitas to the work.
Kirsten Dunne: It has a certain air to it, when you’ve got a beautiful red rope in front of something.
Janet Smyth: There is that immediacy of how the art was made,
and then conversely how we’re not allowed to run our hands over it, or get really close and stare at it.
Kirsten Dunne: It’s a really difficult tension between wanting people to get close to objects,
and be able to see them in the way they’re meant to be seen, versus protecting them
Narrator: But this dynamic between artwork and viewer has changed dramatically in recent years
as installation and experiential artwork has really broken through in the art scene.
Large-scale work that fills rooms and inspires touch sound and smell.
Holly Prentice: It’s no longer just an artwork on the wall, you’re going to walk round it and see it from all angles.
Narrator: Installation artwork has roots in the 60’s, with artists like Marcel Duchamp
and Allan Kaprow. Think the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern, and its slides, swings and suns.
Whilst experiential artwork emergent in the past decade has further broken-down barriers
inviting participation, and touch.
Keith Hartley: Few artists now who are particularly interested in engaging with the audience.
Not just visually, but in a way they are part of that environment.
Narrator: ‘HappyHere’ is one such piece that involves the viewer in its creation and experience
whilst Ernesto Neto’s ‘It Happens When The Body Is The Anatomy of Time’ plays with smell,
packing huge forms of nylon mesh with rich spices.
Kirsten Dunne: It was a really interesting sensory experience.
The incredible smell of these spices set across the gallery
which lasted for probably about a year afterwards.
Narrator: Of course, these emergent forms have further blurred the lines between viewer and artwork
in a way that has kind of complicated relationships with work in traditional galleries.
Luke Edwards: It can sometimes be a little bit confusing,
because more and more artists nowadays have work that you can interact with.
Graeme Gollan: They're often not sure if it’s art or not.
Kirsten Dunne: You can touch here, but you can’t touch there.
Holly Prentice: We are definitely testing visitors on how you’re going to view it.
Luke Edwards: So that line of it being no touching/touching has kind of changed over time.
Narrator: It's important that art isn’t routinely touched, as canvases, paints and
sculptures can be so delicate - despite our conservation staff routinely handling them.
But this all raises questions, that the galleries are continually assessing.
How do rules and barriers affect the atmosphere of galleries?
And how should the preservation of work over the centuries
be balanced with this idea of artwork being for the public, and being accessible to everyone?
Lucy Askew: It’s a really tough question to answer I would say.
Kirsten Dunne: Whether that’s the right balance is a really- I think you’d have to ask our audience that.
That’s a really difficult question to answer.
Janet Smyth: I mean, if we’re going to have the artists of the future then they’ve got to start somewhere.
And being a passive viewer is great,
but actually being able to kind of inspire that curiosity and that creativity as well is even better.
Narrator: Do you get the urge to reach out and touch art?
Leave us a comment, subscribe, and keep an eye open for the next video in the series.