Notes on Taylor Swift
Cultural icon, historical legend.
Last month, the Museum of Arts and Design unveiled their temporary exhibit titled Taylor Swift: Storyteller. The collection features concert attire, props, jewelry, and other memorabilia from, what the Museum’s website describes as, “one of the most prolific songwriters in history.”1
If you know me, it’s probably no shock to you that I’m talking about Taylor Swift. Again. But I promise I have a point this time.
Why is there an entire museum exhibit dedicated to Taylor’s artistic career and work? Because there’s something clearly exceptional about her. Not just any songwriter could write ten award-winning albums; not just any performer could nail a 52-song setlist over a three hour performance; and not just any artist could sell 2.4 million tickets during presale alone, breaking the record for the most concert tickets ever sold in a single day.
When I go to the Museum of Arts and Design’s exhibit, I know that I can’t do what Taylor Swift does. Likewise, when I go to the MET, I know that I can’t do what Henri Matisse or Pablo Picasso or Claude Monet did.
Not just any art makes it into a museum. Every item in a museum is there on purpose. Curators picked that piece because they felt it is exceptionally illustrative of a cultural phenomenon or historical moment. It is through this process, Alice Procter explains in The Whole Picture, that “museums bestow cultural value.”2
If you ask me who the most important artist from the impressionist movement is, I’ll name Claude Monet. That might be right; I don’t know! But Claude Monet is also the only artist I can name from the impressionist movement.
The curation process is an inherently exclusionary process. The choice to showcase a particular item is always at the expense of another. While item A may showcase a prominent cultural moment, excluding item B silences another artist, community, or history. Procter urges us to resist the harmful misconception of “believing that, if it’s worthy, it’s in a museum – and conversely, if it’s not in a museum, it’s irrelevant.”3
…
Street art is everything museum art is not.
First, street art is logistically accessible to creator and viewer. To create, graffiti requires only a spray paint bottle and a few minutes. Cost, time, and expertise aren’t barriers to entry. For the viewer, these works aren’t gatekept by imposing buildings and ticket counters. Rather, the art exists in highly visible public spaces and the street is the avenue of communication.
Furthermore, many types of public art, such as graffiti, are often created anonymously. It is distinct from most other art forms in which artists seek recognition and praise. The focus of the art is not on the creator; in fact, it can take them out of the equation entirely. The creation of public art reunites creators and their audiences, defying generational, gendered, or socioeconomic boundaries. There are no intermediaries.
While a museum will provide extensive copy to situate a work of fine art within a specific historical and artistic context, street art stands alone. It does not rely on linguistic or discursive structures, but rather, is made up of “symbolic structures functioning as tools of communication.”4 These symbolic structures create a shared experience among viewers and between artist and viewer, serving as a “universal mode of language.”5
Lastly, street art exists outside of the ‘culture industry’ in which art is commodified and valued based on its ability to be bought and sold in capitalist markets. Street art exists independent of the market; it is not made to serve capitalist economic structures and the neoliberal political ideologies that often accompany it. (After all, Taylor Swift’s Eras tour is already the highest grossing female tour of all time, in which she is expected to personally net $155 million, moving her up to billionaire status by the end of the year.)
The fine art in museums is valuable, but it is not the only valuable art. Street art democratizes and diversifies the process of creating and engaging with art, and thus, can challenge hegemonic narratives of what constitutes art at all.
Alice Procter, The Whole Picture: The colonial story of the art in our museums & why we need to talk about it (London: Cassell, 2020), 26.
Ibid., 18.
Robert E. Innis, “Resisting Forms: Prolegomena to an Aesthetics of Resistance,” Street Art of Resistance, eds. Sarah H. Awad and Brady Wagoner, (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017), 64.
Ibid., 80.