Learning the art lingo: the people, periods and -isms

When she first starts working as a security guard at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Bianca Bosker is so bored that she prays someone will touch the art. ‘Do it, I urged silently from my spot by the wall. Do it so I can tell you not to.’ She’s to stand for hours on end, staring into space, reporting anything that could pose a threat. On the first day she radios her supervisors to alert them to a stray leaf: ‘Not exactly a suspicious package, but I needed something to interrupt the tedium.’

The job is one of several Bosker picks up in her quest to understand why art matters. An aspiring artist turned journalist, she’d hoped to become ‘an art appreciator, if not an art maker’ until she moved to New York and swiftly became overwhelmed by everything she didn’t know – ‘the people, the periods, the -isms’.