T
he Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM) reopened to visitors last month, albeit in an abridged form. Visitors are required to reserve a ticket in advance online and to adhere to a posted code of conduct requiring social distancing, mask wearing and restricted movement through the galleries. One might think this would diminish the experience; however, while it does pose obvious limitations, it encouraged me to deviate from my own natural viewing patterns enough to see the collections from a different point of view. In the late 1960s, the Marxist agitprop artist Guy Debord professed that artists should encourage the pursuit of alternative pathways through the commercialized terrain of the modern world. These dĂŠrives, as he called them, were meant to destabilize conventional engagements with public
