The Amsterdam Street Art Museum is a grassroots community organization that uses bottom-up tactics to design community initiatives. The collection of work showcases talents of mostly international street artists who come and create socially conscious and inclusive work in the community. As we walked around the community I noticed many positive aspects about the non-profit and it’s mission and execution. I’ve elaborated on some of these innovations below:
- The artists seem to be fairly compensated for their work: This organization invites artists to produce their work and have it be naturally “displayed” in the community.
- The notion of a traditional museum experience in challenged. The works are part of the community fabric and removing them from their natural space would defeat their purpose and the way that they engage with the viewer. A traditional museum asks viewers to observe while this museum allows people to get an immersive and more authentic experience with the art.
- Graffiti itself is an innovative art form because it traditionally is a way for people outside the social norm to express themselves and their typically marginalized or minority perspective on our world.
I’ve also been thinking about how in developing a formalized museum around graffiti the point of the art form could potentially lose an integral part of its identity. A museum’s purpose is often to place art in one location and create a guided and informative experience around it. In some cases art works have become “high art” because they were placed in a museum behind a piece of glass. Even small sketches or drafts of famous works are considered just as valuable as the final piece because they have been placed in a museum collection and deemed worthy of the eyes of gawking tourists. I wonder if by creating a museum-like tour experience of the street art the meaning and context of the work is changed. Some of my questions are...
- Will art begin to be designed to target certain audiences/tours in order to bring in money?
- Will artists be swayed by money over their personal message and statement that they want to share?
- Will the instagram posts from tourists white-wash the message from the artist?
- Does the community actually benefit from the street art - are their lives experiences portrayed by the work and, if so, who is the target audience the artist and non-profit is interested in sharing the message with?
I do understand that in order to share art and its messages you need to formalize an experience that people can engage with, but I wonder if heightened structured and artificially designed experiences can actually take away from the power and message of the street art movement. For example, after this museums trip a few of us went to the Banksy exhibit at MOCO. It was quite jarring to witness street art-style work housed in a physical museum after having come from the outdoor walking tour. I felt like I was missing the context in which this work was meant to be seen, especially because Banksy is so anti-capitalist and anti-establishment. Seeing his work inside a museum made me think more about how contextualizing work is an integral part of how the viewer understands it; the museum format works to define the target audience and this also informs the type of work that artists make because if a formal museum is the standard of success then I wonder if only a certain type of artwork will be created.
I hope that the Amsterdam Street Art museum is able to walk a line between sharing work with the public and turning the community into a zoo or a profit of some sort.
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