COMUNICACIÓN Y PRENSA

• Johan Idema
• Gustavo Gili, 2016

Johan Idema describes himself as a passionate supporter of cultural promotion. He claims that we need to reinvent the way in which art is shown so as to make it more exciting, relevant and accessible to the public in general.
The title of the book we are recommending today is quite self explanatory. With a strongly educational objective, the author’s hard work is clear to see behind the book’s texts and images. First of all he observes and later reverts and transforms situations that are easy for all of us to recognize from our own experience. 
The result is an amusing handbook which helps us on the one hand to reflect on these containers of art, which in some way have been moving away from their raison d’être: the public; and on the other to break away from our own habits and customs to enable us to enjoy a visit to a museum in an active, critical and motivating way.  
The book contains 32 very short chapters in which we will find above all questions and how to answer them. Is it possible to chat to the security staff in the exhibition room or start a debate with unknown visitors? Do the frames of the pictures have any meaning? Are there other ways of looking at nudes, landscapes or portraits? 
Idema claims that there are other ways of enjoying the experience of visiting a museum and invites us to discover them.