It's a set of theories postulated by a group of art historians that suggest that museums should no longer operate as objective storehouses for great objects, openly accessible to whomever would like to come see them. The museum should instead be an institution with more activist goals that looks at society, and looks at the objects in its collection, and says: How do we want to change society, and how do we want to use these things to create this change?

But doesn't the traditional museum impose a political agenda of its own? That of the status quo, for example?

This is the core argument of the new museology. I find it funny. Traditionally, museums used to organize their collections according to the region in which they were made, and often according to the chronology in which they were made. It's hard to see where politics could have entered into it. Museums and curators organized their objects that way in order to clearly and objectively present their collections, so that viewers who were not well-versed in art history could just come and browse the collection. New museologists have tried to make that approach seem political.

Chronology and geography -- I wonder if the new museologists see politics infusing those categories, or the people and institutions that would make use of such categories.

Their primary argument really is that connoisseurship, or the methods through which art historians have assessed and compared works, is some kind of "dead white male," mystical method, through which European painting always ended up on top. Today curators are spending an enormous amount of their time concocting theories and revising how their collections are presented.

Is this why, when I go to a museum these days, I'm so often more struck by themes and curatorial gambits than I am by the art?

Indeed. And you're often overwhelmed by wall labels that are larger than the artworks themselves.

Aren't the new museologists, though, just making the curatorial point of view explicit? And isn't that a good thing?

But what can the curator's point of view be when you're putting all the paintings made in Italy during a certain century in a certain room? I don't understand how the argument can be made that that's a politicized approach. To me, so much of this is common sense -- the idea that one painting can be better than another, for instance. You go to the Louvre, and there are so many people in front of the "Mona Lisa" you can barely see it. Some of that has to do with fame, of course. But ultimately that fame is the result of people over centuries of time finding something of value in that work. The new museologists and the new art historians like to make all sorts of complicated arguments about how Leonardo only came out on top because of some political strategy that's been perpetuated. But you go to the Louvre and you see those people standing there, and you see the painting yourself, and you just say no.

No one's holding a gun to the heads of the people looking at that painting. I've always found that people who make the argument that everything is at base political are people for whom that's true. What I quarrel with is their insistence that that's true for me, let alone in a cosmic sense. In your view, is that what these new approaches represent -- people for whom politics is always paramount?

These are people for whom politics is an end in itself. They often seem to be people who just can't enjoy a thing in itself.

Harold Bloom identifies himself as a lefty, but he makes a similar argument -- that the deconstructionists who have taken over literary studies are people who really don't like literature or art. What they really like is power and politics.

I would agree with Bloom. I think similar thoughts when I see collectors who spend tons of money on work that's simply no fun to look at. There are people who fill their houses with work -- some of which is little more than propaganda -- work that's meant simply to make a statement that you can understand almost instantly. It's like filling your house with posters. It doesn't have anything to do with the enjoyment of looking at something. It seems to have to do with the desire to feel as though you're supporting the points of view embodied in the work. I have no trouble with people enjoying politics. I'm very engaged in politics myself. But politics and art are two very different things and to confuse them is very dangerous for both.

How many American museums have adopted the new museology?

Probably the majority. And many in places where people would be surprised to see such changes: in Baltimore, for instance, and at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

You point out that something so banal as museum entrances have been affected by this.

Museum entrances used to force you to walk up a lengthy staircase under, say, a grand colonnade, or under a portico. It was a grandiose experience that took a minute or two to proceed through. It helped you focus your attention on transitioning from day-to-day things -- cars going by -- and focus instead on an experience of high seriousness. It helped you experience the museum as a place for contemplation.

It set a mood.

Today's entrances make no attempt to set that kind of mood. Now, it's a more continuous experience. The experience you're involved in before you enter continues on the inside. You often see a gift shop, a cafe. You don't have a sense of preparing for a higher experience than you were having before.

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"