Laying Out The Welcome Mat

Installation artist Lee Mingwei wants to make you feel right at home

Like snowflakes, works of art are all uniquely beautiful-but unless you're willing to examine each one closely, they all start to look the same. This has presented a challenge for museum curators, who have responded by putting up placards telling us who created what work and how, and offering gallery talks, lecture series and on-site concerts. These efforts, they hope, will turn the public's detached admiration of art into active aesthetic engagement. However, the typical experience of an art museum remains much like our reaction to the year's first snowfall: first it's impressive, later it's banal and finally, we just wish it would go away.

In his one-room installation at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum entitled "The Living Room," artist-in-residence Lee Mingwei attempts to bridge the gap between art and the public in an innovative, interactive exhibition. Inspired by the spirit of hospitality and intellectual exchange that characterized Gardner's turn-of-the-century salon lifestyle, "The Living Room" rejects the notion of the traditional art object in favor of a participatory process in which the visitor's own aesthetic experience constitutes the finished product. Rather than look at anything in particular, Lee encourages "viewers" to discuss their aesthetic ideas in a warm and friendly environment, helping to make artistic discourse part of their everyday lives.

"The Living Room" is essentially just that: a single room, modestly furnished with couches, chairs, potted plants and a few caged birds, centered around a coffee table. Every two days a different museum employee is encouraged to bring in objects of personal or aesthetic value that he or she would like to share with the public.

When I arrived at "The Living Room," not only was I greeted with the pleasant aroma of coffee and shortbread, along with the sounds of an Italian concerto, but host for the day Frank DiMaria personally introduced himself and invited me to make myself comfortable. As I browsed through his art objects-books on Egyptian philosophy, sheet music by Maurice Chevalier, cheap miniature sphinxes-I overheard the conversations of other patrons as they indeed discussed their ideas about the art they had seen that day. Far from the imposing gallery room in which novice visitors muffle their comments for fear of being "wrong," "The Living Room" fosters an atmosphere in which visitors feel comfortable to comment and question-exactly the kind of environment conducive to aesthetic discovery.

As I leafed through some sheets of poetry on the table, the host, claiming authorship, offered to recite them to me-which he did, to my delight and the enjoyment of everyone else in the room. It became obvious that our host's art objects, though inexpensive and not even "artistic" in the traditional sense, were nonetheless invaluable for the personal meaning they possessed.

Lee's previous exhibitions include "The Dining Project" (1997), in which he invited strangers from New Haven (where he earned his Masters of Fine Arts) to enjoy a meal with him and "The Letter Writing Project" (1998), in which viewers were given the opportunity to write letters to distant friends and loved ones to be read by subsequent patrons until the exhibition's close, upon which they would be sealed and sent away. As Lee says, "I don't have an end product. For me, it is about the process and the experience." The "trust and intimacy" created by "The Letter Writing Project" was, for Lee, as valuable as any lasting picture. Similarly, by including museum staff in the artistic process, Lee aims to help the Gardner Museum "regain its role as more than a mausoleum for inanimate, exotic objects" and emphasize its position as a "living organism" integral to the community.

Though not worth a special trip, "The Living Room" will enrich the experience of all the visitors to the museum. Intellectually motivating, this installation is one that does Mrs. Gardner proud.

Drop by Lee Mingwei's "The Living Room" inside the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum at 280 The Fenway in Boston, a few hundred yards from the Museum of Fine Arts, close to the Museum T stop on the Green Line. The installation runs through April 30. Hours are Tue. through Sun., 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $10 for adults, but only $5 ($3 on Wednesdays) with a student ID.