Style over substance? ... the British Museum's First Emperor exhibition. Photograph: Linda Nylind
The word blockbuster comes from the second world war: a massive bomb designed to destroy entire swaths of city at a time. In the 50s it started to be used about plays; in the 70s, the era of Star Wars, people began to talk about blockbuster movies.
The blockbuster also hit art. Maev Kennedy wrote on this blog a while back about fond memories of what many people think of as the first modern art blockbuster, the massive Tutankhamun show at the British Museum in 1972. It was a ground-breaking show: it made the cover of the Sunday Times magazine, sold out immediately; punters queued for hours to get in. Curators and gallerists suddenly realised that, if the marketing was right, real money could be made.
Yet if the new head of London's National Gallery has anything to do with it, the blockbuster could be at an end - at least in his neck of the woods. Nicholas Penny detonated his own quiet bomblet yesterday, announcing that from now on the gallery will attempt to make less noise and instead produce more unexpected, perhaps more scholarly shows. "Most blockbusters are actually showing people what they already know," he said. "I think that a major gallery should be prepared to introduce people to something they know nothing about."
Jonathan Jones wrote in today's paper that this was part of a wider malaise, one that had infected the whole business of curating. Tate's new exhibition of Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia was "hasty and superficial", he suggested; the V&A's Surreal Things last year was equally unsatisfying. Both were instances of galleries attempting "media-mad folly", scrabbling for attention and column inches. Things must be bad: Jonathan even found himself agreeing with Brian Sewell.
Of course art critics can have their debates and disputes. But, as ever, we're interested in what you think. Are blockbusters worth it - a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see uniquely great art culled from galleries across the globe? Or have they become empty, shallow experiences, sloppily put together and downright unpleasant to visit? Is it time the blockbuster was buried?
