Reading 3

            At the beginning of this reading there was a question, “Should a gallery be adjunct to the temple, factory, or department store?”  This question was followed by the author’s opinion that the museum or gallery space should be filled with conversation and interaction, a place where the physical world pushes back.  I thought this was an interesting concept.  It’s something I’ve discussed with others before, but never really considered more than just a brief conversation with peers.        

            I guess I would agree, that museums can sometimes feel constraining and that the viewer is limited by using just sight to understand an artwork, especially when I comes to ceramics.  Ceramics should be a source of comfort and hands on investigation.  Feeling textures and mistakes of the human hand help connect people to an object.  People learn more from mistakes of touch.   

            Ezra also refers to the household as a place where things of diverse origin can interact with each other and with people as they’re used or places about the house.  This is another way of getting people to think of museums or galleries as a more comfortable place of interaction, like a home.  The objects created by an artist are just as personal as some of those found in a home.  A lot of things in the home can be beautiful as well as useful.  This lead me to me own question, “What good is art if we aren’t fully interacting with it?”