It might be satire, but Colbert asks the big questions that everyone should be asking of museums: What is the point of art?  Is art only good if an art critic says it’s good?  Can “good” art exist without an audience? Who decides how much art is worth? Who decides what goes in a museum?  Colbert even begins by saying: “I don’t like art…and that’s mainly because I don’t get art.” So I ask a further question: How can museums help visitors feel more comfortable around the art — how can we make them feel like they “get it”? (Further, how can we help them feel comfortable with the fact that it’s OK to not “get it” — after all, isn’t that why art is studied: because we never feel like we’ve completely plumbed the interpretations of a work of art?)

These are huge, massive questions. I don’t really think that museum staff have the answer to most of them, and that’s probably why we do what we do — because we want to begin to answer them. I do think they’re questions we should ask ourselves and our visitors, because they can help us learn more about our audience and about our collections and institutions.  So as a museum educator, I’m asking all of you, how would you answer the big questions put to Campbell last night? How can museums help you “get art”? Comment away!

(PS: A final thought… Colbert ends by asking about the art housed in the Met: “Do they [the public] vote? Do you let them vote?” He’s met with a chuckle, but what an interesting web 2.0/feedback venture that would be… to ask visitors as they exit: do you think we should keep this work on view in the Museum; why or why not? Would you want to do something like that in a Museum?)