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How Museums Ruin Art – The Cultural Tutor

Alex O'Connor | December 15, 2025



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– VIDEO NOTES

Sheehan Quirke is the Cultural Tutor, a writer with 1.7 million followers on X. His work on art, history, and architecture is some of the most widely-enjoyed in the world.

He writes a newsletter called the Areopagus, which I highly recommend subscribing to.

– LINKS

The Cultural Tutor on X: https://x.com/culturaltutor

Join the Areopagus: https://culturaltutor.com/areopagus

– TIMESTAMPS

0:00 What is art?
4:22 What should good art represent?
10:43 How photography has changed our relationship to art
15:53 The Mona Lisa is not the Mona Lisa
22:58 Should we restore damaged art?
35:43 The problem with art galleries
45:36 The intellectual gatekeeping of art
52:38 Is there such a thing as “bad art”?
55:27 Is there such a thing as “fake art”?
57:58 What counts as art

– CONNECT

My Website: https://www.alexoconnor.com

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——————————————

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Written by Alex O'Connor

Comments

This post currently has 48 comments.

  5. @RonJohn63

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    When seeing David, I don't think of David and Goliath, because David was a boy when he fought Goliath, and that is manifestly not a statue of a boy.

  8. @wehojm7320

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    You’re discussing the pros and cons of viewing arts “inseeto”(sp) seeing art in the space it was originally meant to be seen in. ie liturgical art. It takes on a different interpretation and “feeling” if it is viewed in a museum.

  9. @lys2303

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    I’m watching this whilst mending a skirt that my grandmother made that I inherited recently. My grandmother passed away 3 weeks ago. In a way I’m restoring her artwork, her clothing was beautiful and making any alterations to her work feels emotionally difficult but I am mending it so that I can make use of it so it can continue to live on. If I didn’t replace the zip on the skirt then I wouldn’t be able to wear it anymore and it would remain in a cupboard and that would feel like more of a loss.

  10. @jeffzuhone904

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    We all see David out of context. The messages in the david would have been loud and clear to the people of Michelangelo's time. In fact, if we were not given the title, most people would not identify David these days. But a 15th century illiterate Italian peasant would need no title to recognize David a mile away.

  11. @RSSZ87

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    Some considerations of mine during the section 'Should we restore damaged art?':

    – I agree with the long haired fella, so called restorations shouldn't take place. We should limit our actions to preservation only. However, I think there's an additional layer to this question re existent restoration efforts. If we agree that we should limit ourselves to preservation, does this extend to removing this existent layers of restoration and laying bare, insofar as is possible, what remains of the artist's original work?

    I'm reminded of the recent Salvator Mundi debacle. Whatever one's opinion of that painting, significant prior restoration was undone and then redone by Dianne Modestini. Personally, I am far more intrigued, from an aesthetic perspective, by the work in its cleaned state, before Ms Modestini began her alterations. Then there's that other da Vinci masterpiece Lady with an Ermine. Originally known to have featured a background of blue-grey and changed whilst in possession of the Czartoryski family to black. Perhaps harder to say, having no frame of reference for the original background, but I hesitate to think the aesthetics of the picture would be improved by a return to blue-grey. There is something quite alluring regards the contrast between Cecilia Gallerani and the ermine, set against a stark black background.

    – I was a little disappointed re the conversation on the Statue of Liberty. The idea that the statue turning green is an undesirable consequence of weathering suggests that Bartholdi wasn't familiar with his medium. Clearly he was and was well aware that in time a patina would develop, changing the colour. A cleaning of the Statue of Liberty, in my opinion, would not be the same as the overpainting of a crumbling Old Master painting.

  15. @youwillnowexplode

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    Art is the intersection of three things – an idea, the manifestation of that idea, and the context of that manifestation. There's no such thing as good or bad art, because it's just a collection of those things. Instead there are good and bad ideas, good and bad manifestations, and good and bad contexts to make and view the manifestations.

  16. @AleksaRadonjić-g1z

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    art conservator here (and i think it would be a very interesting discussion if one was involved in this podcast) – restoration IS preservation. many people have a sort of distorted idea that restoration deeply impacts the integrity of art when in fact, even the most “radical” idea people can have (like retouching) is minimal, thought through and most importantly – reversible. the only interventions that are not reversible are cleaning – such is removing the grime and potentially varnish and structural interventions, which are needed not just for the aesthetics but for the genuine preservation – grime for example carries sulphites, acids, etc that can impact the chemical stability of the pigment and the canvas. even in the cases of major loss of paint layer for example, you’re not supposed to “imagine” what it looks like and imply artists intent, but just think of the way it can be presented in the most comprehensive way. so we’re not doing anything based on whim or imagination, but actually try to do as least as possible, by rule. it’s a regulated field, we all know how much we’re carrying in our hands 🙂 most importantly each piece of art, artefact, a cultural heritage is a piece on its own, a project on its own – there is not a one size fits all, restoration-conservation plan is determined individually on a case to case basis. great discussion however i would be very excited to revisit it with someone from the field, i think a very interesting discussion would be born from it 🙂

  17. @Grant.Prinsloo

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    I think "What is art" or "Is that art" is the wrong question. I think the correct question is "what do we value most", and I think the answer to that question is novelty.
    When artist X paints a replica of the Mona Lisa, and does so in a way that it's impossible to tell it apart from the original, we still place a higher value on the original. We can even go further and say that artist X's version is unequivocally superior to the original, and still we would place a higher value on the original.

  19. @avisian8063

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    My definition of Art:
    Anything created by a person, that you feel has intrinsic value, but you can't explain the value in concrete enough terms to effectively monetise 😉

  21. @THEMASKEDMASTER

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    The whole point of art is that the creation doesn’t last forever like all beauty throughout the universe. Even your perception of beauty doesn’t last forever. This is what freaked Jesus out the most. Everything that has a beginning has an end. It does matter what beauty exists in the past but we should be thankful that we can still witness its aging beauty and always be mindful of the future when one day ALL ART WILL BE NONEXISTENT LIKE IT NEVER EXISTED BEFORE IT WAS CREATED.

  23. @RognaldsenMEDIA

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    I feel like the Mona Lisa thing can be changed tho like u said the iconic one would be the fake one but imagine the real one also kinda gets more story to it. It literally becomes a piece almost no one has seen the perfect con and now we can finally see the truth some might consider that even more amazing

  26. @philotomybaar

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    That brief aside about music made me pause and read Alex’s written piece. As a professional musician I’m so glad to hear someone else saying this. The ubiquity of music everywhere you go makes me sad. I often think that people really don’t like music, because if they did, they’d be quiet and listen. It’s like using someone’s painting as a tablecloth. Worse maybe, because a tablecloth at least serves a purpose other than just filling space.

  27. @scottnunnemaker5209

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    Art is easy to define. Art= trash someone found value in. Two people can look at the same piece and one can say without a doubt that it is art, and the other can say without a doubt it's trash, they would both be correct. For example the Statue of David. While some people happen to appreciate unpainted marble statues, I find them to be trashy. The original artists painted them in vivid colors, but today the colors are almost completely gone. It’s like if you stripped the top layers of paint off the Mona Lisa. It’s still probably good, but is it as artsy as it originally was?

  32. @Sammyandbobsdad

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    No work of art is ever finished in the mind of the artist. They may stop themselves from working on it, but they are always sure just one more brush stroke, one more fleck of marble removed, a second longer exposure of a photograph and then … then it will be perfect. And of course, perfection, like proof of god, does not exist.

  35. @turgorojare575

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    The uncircumcised David haha there is so much layers of meaning and add to that the passing of time and the political winds of Italy, but certainly beautiful sculpture but nowhere near the stuff you find in Rome and Napoli with Baroque sculpture, when saying best skilled item ever created by humans, if you havent experienced it you are in for a marvelous treat 🎉

  37. @stepanpetrov2570

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    40:31 a fly on a microphone. Alex is looking at it. Now google 'Musca depicta'…jest/post mortem/trompe-l'œil (illusion). What is it trying to say? Meanwhile CT saying "nonsense…art speak…gibberish"
    54:53 a fly flies away

  38. @a1white

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    With David (like all Art), it’s the context of where it is placed. The grandeur of the Accadamia and the way it fills that space, even down to the plinth it is on and the city of Florence and its history are all part of the experience. Going to see it in Vegas, like seeing the Venetian hotel, looks impressive but more in a theme park weird kind of way. All these replicas of the world’s treasures in a lurid setting with no context. The meaning is almost lost.

  41. @clavis_aurea

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    35:20 Absolutely not. The grime on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is exactly like the dust someone cleans off a sculpture today. Just because it was left there for a longer period of time does not somehow make it part of the work. The grime is absolutely superfluous. It is dust and grime from burning candles under the ceiling, nothing about it is related to anything intrinsic to the work.

  42. @clavis_aurea

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    31:00 How are the two in any way the same or comparable? We don't go to finish an unfinished piece because it was never completed, not because we see its unfinished state as the completed work. Restoring the Sistine Chapel is grounded in the reality of it having been completed, after which it deteriorated. It cannot reasonably be argued that smoke from hundreds of years of candles, burning underneath it is somehow related to the work itself. Dust and smoke doesn't make the ceiling somehow more reflective of Michelangelo's intention. So the pre-1980s state of it did not reflect its initial state or the intention of the artist. It was the darkened ceiling of the Sistine chapel that was the 'lie', not its restored condition.

  43. @rheashot

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    interesting conversation , but i don’t think abstract art is “purely decorative” and Michelangelo intentionally produced those “unfinished” sculptures to show his “process” publicly

  44. @maloublue4969

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    I am a restorer in training and wanted to chime in on this conversation:
    The first point is, that we do think a lot about the ethics of restauration, which is why these days professional restorers take great care in using only reversible methods and materials which we know are chemically compatible with the original material and wont harm them in any way even over long periods of time.
    We also make sure to make the restauration easily distinguishable from the original substance of the piece. Especially if we don't know how the original looked, because we explicitly don't assume to know what the artist intended. Which is also why we would never finish an unfinished piece of art.
    Conservation is a very big part of our job and if possible we do prefer just conserve original substance. But sometimes restauration and conservation go hand in hand, like when cleaning a piece for example it is restauration which also prevents future damage that could be caused by dirt.

  46. @TheTruthIsEasier

    December 15, 2025 at 8:22 am

    29:00 Biagio da Cesena was a Cardinal caricatured by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel for criticizing the nudity in His paintings. When Cesena went and whined to the Pope about being caricatured, the Pope said that since Cesena's likeness was depicted in hell, he had no jurisdiction there, so there Cesena's face remained. 😆😆

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