The Grove Project

The problem of the Cameron

Rachel and I talk about the problem of the Cameron Museum.

We went last night and it was perfectly pleasant. The evening was a trifecta—some of the work was great; afterwards, we got burritos at the funky and incomparable Flaming Amy’s, then stopped by Harris Teater’s on the way home for a twelver of Amstel Light and some big martini olives. The museum’s current exhibitions are (tenuously) related to one another under the rubric of scale and measurement: A collection of large scale works called “Big” is showing near the “little” exhibit in the cases along the main aisle, and the quote from Protagoras that “Man is the measure of all things” brings in the more traditional holdings—tribal masks, ancient art.

Some of the big pieces were really great looking. The loud and provocative “Twins”. The room-sized landscape diorama—from which the squatting-boy-with-binoculars out front of the museum was taken—is bright and funny, and Eric Rudd’s sculpture, “Walter’s Ontogen,” is canny. I thought Paul Kittelson’s large objects (a giant popcorn kernel suspended, a burnt match as big as your arm) were kinda tiresome. Some of the little pieces were attractive. When “big” or the “little” is all these things were, they’re just craft fair chingaderas. For my money, the good stuff is in the afterthoughts—in the bins of the Brown Wing. Great portraits, a video installation of a woman’s back that really is riveting. Local artists.

But whether it’s good or bad, and however hard the Cameron tries, the place itself just seems sort of inert.

The Sweet & Savory Cafe at the museum is a a microcosm of the trouble—a case in point. Their food is probably great, the help looks eager, eating there seems like it should be a fun thing to do, a sort of event. And yet like the rest of the museum the actual setup for eating feels proscriptive. Ponderous. Misplaced. The space where the cafe does business is right in the unplanned-for middle of the museum, in this long hall. The echoey sounds and high ceilings, the uncozy windows and hovering staff, the absence of other customers—these all make the idea of having a high-end snack or an espresso there off-putting. The experience of relating to art at the museum itself is similar.

And that’s terrible!, because it’s a beautiful place with its own good collections and lots of good shows as well. The art can completely turn you on. The building itself is beautiful. It is, in a way, “centrally located” (though really that’s just a coy way to say it’s in the middle of nowhere). A museum should be a thoroughfare. It should be a public place to view art; if there’s really no one around at all, no sense of energy or discussion, then it’s hardly different than a coffee table book, which is sort of what the Cameron feels like: a coffee table book.

When I interviewed Ruth Funk, a long time supporter and patron of the Cameron, she said she thought the Cameron was succeeding “despite its location” at the intersection of 17th and…something…17th and Independence? Shipyard? But is it succeeding? Every time I’ve been, the parking lot is empty but for staff cars. Virtually the only others in the museum are the stuffy, well-intentioned volunteer staffers in oversize broaches and reading glasses, whose solicitousness always seems either overeager or vaguely condescending. They can’t help it! They can’t believe you’ve shown up without your middle school docent badge or your one-college-credit signatory letter in hand.

The Cameron seems dead. They obviously make a great effort, they obviously want people to come. They have good works there. And classes, special dinners, &cetera. But their efforts don’t seem to avail. Maybe there’s a party goin’ on there every time I’m not there—who knows. But they seem to be trying to reach different constituencies without succeeding at any, really. It may be a problem endemic to museums. Museum-goers always act shy about art and awkward. Museum curators may be crippled by some ponderous sense of mission. Or try to dispel the usual awkwardness in the face of Art by being too glib or playful. Cameron’s a sleeping beauty with no princes.

The Cameron has the problem, like so many other institutions in Wilmington, of not knowing quite what it is. The museum cafe is a microcosm of the museum, and the museum a microcosm of Wilmington: The Cameron has inherited the city’s identity crisis. Is it a big city art gallery? Who is it for? Is it for hipsters in hemp shoes and dreadlocks, for ladies in purple hats? Is it formal or groovy? Rock radio ads or Landfall only?

Scale. That’s the issue. With the museum as with the art in there now. And with Wilmington. Scale and place. What is Wilmington’s scale and who are its museums for? And city planning, of course: Much of the land between downtown and the beach is Cameron land, and that may have made the location opportune in other respects, but it doesn’t seem like quite the right “intersection” for a museum.

[where: 3201 South 17th Street, Wilmington, NC 28412]