Cyrus the Great

Last weekend, I visited the new Cy Twombly exhibition at the MFA—Making Past Present—in the company of a 9-year-old child. I should have anticipated her complaint: “Why are these pictures in an art gallery? I could have painted them!”

It would be an enormous boon to adults in my position if museums posted an admonitory wall panel at the entrance of every such exhibit, explaining

(a) why your 9-year-old could not have painted these

and/or

(b) why it’s artistically irrelevant that your 9-year old could have painted these.

The panel could be copied and distributed worldwide, curtailing countless unenlightened conversations. (Is there an orthodox reply to the 9-year-old’s objection? Feel free to put citations in the comments.)

Part of the answer, I suppose, is that like other conceptual art—from Duchamp’s Fountain onwards—aesthetic interest lies in the presence of this object in this context. Making Past Present collocates with Greek and Roman relics Twombly’s fragmentary texts: graffiti fro…