In Search of the Elusive Popular Exhibiion

Scholarship AND popularity? Real Clear Arts observes that Mount Holyoke's exhibition exploring the history of wine's functions through art (Wine and Spirit: rituals, Remedies, and Revelry) is a groundbreaking concept. Visitors to college art galleries like wine and will find this exhibition captivating because the art historian who has organized the exhibition focuses on ...wine and all its related accoutrements and ritual. Real Clear Arts likes this exhibition because it "marries scholarship with popular appeal in a way that many so-called populist shows, conceived to draw crowds, do not." In other words, if we turn back the clocks a few decades and try as art historians to unpack a work's iconography and interpret the subject matter accordingly, we are at the forefront of populism because we explain what the viewer is actually seeing. I am still trying to wrap my brain around this idea that old fashioned interpretation of subject matter a la Panofsky, might be the key we threw away in our haste to stay au courant with literary criticism. All I can say is, it's about time and let me go pull out those platform shoes that seem to have back into fashion!