ART : Compelling Presentation Makes Exhibit on ‘Titanic’ a Winner

Most of us don’t mind learning something new so long as the learning process is painless--clear-cut, absorbing and neither insulting to the intelligence nor hopelessly arcane. Maybe even fun. So when was the last time you got that kind of “smart thrill” out of a museum show?

My last time was a couple of weeks ago at the exhibit “Titanic,” at the Fullerton Museum Center (through June 23). The time before that was at the opening of “Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany” at the Los Angeles County Museum (through May 12).

These exhibits could hardly be more different from one another, but both come wrapped in compelling packages that modestly utilize multimedia tools as well as reams of explanatory text. And both shows also go right to the heart of what appear to be the primary interests of most museum visitors: the hopes, fears, passions and struggles of other people; and startling or intriguing facts about the way the world works.

“Degenerate Art” is a re-creation of the infamous 1937 exhibit of art the National Socialists considered decadent, insulting and incompetent. Because the show deals with the fates of individual people and the power of a dictator as well as with specific works of art, viewers actively want to know the details. Friends of mine have confessed, in fact, that they were engrossed by the show even though they weren’t terribly interested in much of the art.

“Titanic,” organized by the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Ireland, is, of course, about the famous luxury ocean liner that was on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York in 1912 when it collided with an iceberg one calm spring night, killing 1,489 of the 2,201 people on board.

Admittedly, this subject--like “Degenerate Art”--is a lure all by itself. Who hasn’t heard of the Titanic? And who honestly can claim to have no interest in great tragedies (so long as they happen to other people), the gilded lives of the rich and famous, the persistent inequities between the rich and the poor (who died in disproportionate numbers), misplaced faith in technology and the strange workings of fate?

The show still could have been a clinker. Why is it so irresistible? Because of the combined forces of atmospheric effects, a stress on the human element, vivid translations of abstract information, and a skeptical, myth-debunking attitude.

The atmosphere hits you as soon as you step inside the exhibition area, where a lilting tune of the period plays on a tape. It might be the tune that the ship’s band reportedly was playing the night of the tragedy, before it prudently shifted to “Nearer My God to Thee.” Whether accurate or not (one account I’ve read says the band wasn’t playing at all that night), the music sets the “before” scene with the most economical of means. Suddenly, it is a lovely, relaxed evening aboard ship during the romantic early heyday of ballroom dancing.

In a darkened, semi-enclosed portion of the exhibit, a model of the foundering ship casts an eerie green light on water (it seems to be done with mirrors). While you look at the model, a tape plays eyewitness accounts of the vessel’s final moments, embellished with the “real” sounds of water rushing into the forward compartments after the iceberg tore a 300-foot gash in the ship.

One of the voices recalls “that greenish water creeping up, step after step (with) a sort of ghastly transparency.” The model and the spoken words work together on your imagination. Now you can begin to visualize the tragedy itself.

The exhibit includes replicas of blueprints for the Titanic and other technical data, but they are likely to intrigue only the die-hard ship fanatic. For the rest of us, there are all sorts of other diversions.

Among them are dioramas showing how vastly different the accommodations were for the first- and third-class passengers; copies of smooth-talking advertisements and hand-wringing disaster stories; wonderfully normal, boring letters to wives from husbands who had no way of knowing they were soon to be washed overboard; disaster mementoes (why pass up the opportunity to make a buck?); even a wicked newspaper parody of the 1985 Titanic salvage operation (“Should Reagan Be Salvaged?”).

The statistical aspect of the tragedy becomes more concrete by means of clusters of little dolls representing the saved and the dead in each passenger class. And the show debunks major myths--including the one about the supposed claim that the Titanic was “unsinkable”--in a crisp, concise way. All in all (except for the dull video footage of the ship’s underwater remains), “Titanic” is a winner. And it doesn’t even depend on fancy technology to work its magic.

But not every museum show is primarily about people or intriguing facts. Contemporary art exhibits, for example, generally consist of works that are intended to question the viewer’s beliefs about such topics as the history and practice of art, the act of perception or the sociopolitical attitudes that underlie contemporary behavior.

Curators naturally consider the art to be the main event. They expect the ideal viewer to pay attention when the art says “Look here! Imagine that!” and to enjoy the opportunity to prepare a mental response. The information on the wall is just a signpost, a guide for people who already know a thing or two about art. People who want to learn more are urged to take a docent tour or read the brochure.

Once in a while an enterprising curator tries to help novice viewers by explaining what makes the art tick. But all too often, this “help” just amounts to a list of definitions of art terms or capsule biographies of artists.

It’s not sexy. It’s not interesting. It’s too much like being back in school and having to remember the major points of Chapter 15 for the pop quiz.

That’s what happens when curators think too much about the answer, and not enough about the question. “What do viewers want to know?” is a much better starting point than “what do I know already?”

Many curators would argue that it’s inappropriate or even impossible to try to explain contemporary art in terms that would appeal to the “average” viewer.

It’s one thing to try to re-create the atmosphere aboard a sinking ocean liner, they would say. But it’s quite another thing to attempt to re-create the frame of mind of an artist who decided to make sculpture out of a small piece of wire mesh. Or to conjure up the social climate (in which the most ubiquitous messages are delivered by advertising and pop psychology) that gave birth to artist Jenny Holzer’s LED signs spelling out cliched phrases.

No doubt such “re-creations” would be considered too tacky for words in a major museum. But they might be a challenge to the ingenuity of a less formal institution, like a community arts center. With a few audio-visual aids, a firm grasp of the issues involved and a fearless imagination, maybe somebody can try to tackle some of the “mysteries” that make otherwise aware and intelligent people so leery of contemporary art.