On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art, and Place

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Summary: An Interesting, Challenging Study of Art and Tourism
Review: On The Beaten Track is a collection of essays on the overlapping themes of art, tourism and culture. Lucy Lippard discusses many aspects of modern tourism's impact on local landscapes and people. She places special emphasis on areas she is familiar with --New Mexico and Maine. She is a perceptive and original cultural critic, introducing the reader to alternative interpretations of everyday sites. It has occurred to me in recent years that modern society increasingly resembles a giant theme park or museum, with everything fenced off and labelled for the convenience of conventional, middle class Americans (or Asians or Europeans, as the case may be). This is the sort of thing that Lippard explores in On The Beaten Track.I found her observations on museums especially thought-provoking. Are museums good for the arts or are they elitist institutions that dictate the meaning of art to the masses? This is the kind of question the book raises, without providing any simple answers. While I found the subject matter fascinating, I didn't find the book especially easy to read. While this isn't necessarily bad (not all books are meant to be easy), I find Lippard's style of writing a bit abstruse. In places she quotes one artist or writer after the other (or mentions examples of their works) without tying the various threads together. The style is perhaps analagous to a collage (I believe the author is an artist), and some readers will probably love it. More left-brained readers (e.g. me) may find this a bit perplexing, but we can still appreciate the many important questions and insights brought out in these essays.