Creative Process Journal: Exhibiting Absence in the Museum

Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci

When you visit a museum exhibition, do you ever think about what is not there? Do you notice when your favourite artwork or costume piece has been removed from display? After the Louvre reopened after the theft of the Mona Lisa, thousands of visitors came to gaze at the "blank space and the three nails from which the picture had formally hung" (Belting qtd. in Leahy 256).

Helen Rees Leahy wrote an article called "Exhibiting Absence in the Museum" which expores the idea of absence in a museum and the "fantasy of completion" that exists within the walls of a museum. She suggests that "absence in the museum hovers between memory (of objects lost, forgotten or beyond reach) and anticipation (of objects that will be found, returned or acquired)".  Visitors to a museum are typically presented with the illusion that a collection is complete, since most art museums create narratives around the objects that they have on hand, glossing over the gaps. The curator's knowledge of the "ones that got away" and the "reservoir of possibiities" is the fuel for future acquisitions (251-253).

Postcards from Paris - Musee du Louvre

La Venus de Milo - La Jaconde - La Victoire de Samothrace

Musee du Louvre
Tuilleries Quarter
Open 9 am - 6 pm Wednesday through Monday (closed Tuesday)
Free first Sunday of the month

The Musee du Louvre is home to one of the largest and most important art collections in the world. This vast museum, which began as a medieval fortress in the late 12th century, includes collections of:
European Painting 1200 - 1850
European Sculpture 1100-1850
Oriental antiquities
Egyptian antiquities
Greek, Etruscan and Roman antiquities
Arts of Islam, Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas
Objects d'art (decorative arts like jewelry, furniture, tapestries)

Most people come to the Louvre to see the infamous Mona Lisa (La Gioconda) by Leonardo da Vinci, 1504 and never take time to see the many treasures in the Louvre. Sometimes I've been the only person in the galleries containing objects d'art. But is there any less artistry in this exquisite tapestry Eros and Psyche (c.1770)?