Art is Meant to be Seen

Rollerblading: the latest art installation on the big screen overlooking the Atrium features a reimagined “Dance of the Knights.”

I find all art to be an alluring thing. One is always drawn either towards its consumption or towards its creation. Be it shabby poetry meant for one other person, or no one at all, the chicken scratches that line the margins of notebooks, created in the midst of an important lecture, the novels written by contemporary and long-dead word-masters. All of the above, and countless more, exist to capture the zeitgeist of the now, the past and the future. Perhaps it is no more surprising that SSE seeks to collect and display art at any cost. 

And no, as tempting as it is, I am unable to speak of the financial burden of acquiring the art displayed around the school. Knowing the sticker price of the cowboy or of the toad would be intriguing indeed, but such information seems hard to come by. Besides, I would be no better off arguing that money spent on such art would be better off spent in other ways, that is simply impossible to know. What I can say is that recycling already existing art is frankly banal. I give credit where credit is due: displaying the art for us is valiant, making SSE students more aware and in tune with the artistic, sure. But it is also the most lackluster way of going about it. 

What SSE ought to do, if it wishes to become a pioneer and patron of the arts, is to simply do more of what it already does: commission new art. The Heckscher-Ohlin Room, The Cabinet Room, The Jacob Dahlgren Room. The above are a part of the so-called permanent collection and have been designed explicitly and exclusively for the school’s use. These, I argue, is what art should be about. Much of the rest of the permanent collection, such as, The Chair, Farewell, Whiz, The Union etc etc, was acquired from existing collections and often obscured from public view, as is The Heckscher-Ohlin Room, itself a faculty lounge, never to be accessed by a student. 

The Heckscher-Ohlin Room: named after SSE’s two most renowned economists, the room is kept out of the public’s, and students’, eye.

What good does it do when art that would otherwise be public, in fact, was made to be public, becomes the private and unreachable property of, an admittedly large, handful of people? 

It loses much of its power. 

Art that is created for the public view ought to remain as such. Its creation has its purpose, that being to be viewed. SSE should not take this opportunity away from virtually everyone by placing nonspecific contemporary artwork permanently within its walls. If it wishes to commission art, it should look no further than the wall of plants found in the Atrium, or the many beautified rooms scattered around its interior. As an alternative, keeping art pieces temporarily, and rotating these out, is a much preferred alternative to the monopolization of so many pieces. 

I agree with much of the sentiment of the submitted piece. In fact, I think it is great that art has come to be discussed so openly and constantly within the walls of SSE. My wish is simply that the school’s practice keeps to the very nature of art itself: that art be kept accessible and free to all.