Unembellished Truth
Gallery white walls
wear a necklace
of ill-assorted paintings
strung with care
exactly eye height
for the average eye
but spaced too close
to be at ease
and in any case
they are just awful
these paintings
every one of them
a pain in the average
or in fact any
eye
and so
and so
in the end
the opening reception
is populated by
a crowd full of hands
held carefully distant
from any hint
of pulling out a wallet
4/23/19
Claudia McGill Writes Poetry, Did You Know That? 
The way art works are arranged in a gallery or museum is so important, isn’t it? And I always wonder about the way it seems to be such an after-thought or something nobody has really invested any effort in when I see some collection. One of the biggest offenders for cluttered gallery walls that I have experienced was the Tate in London. They were holding true to that Victorian way or arranging things all close together but the effect was that all of these amazing paintings had no breathing room to really show off and the eyes of the viewer – or certainly my eyes – were just overwhelmed and struggled to focus and get drawn in to any one painting.
When I first started doing shows I used to cram as much as I could on my booth walls in a hodge podge arrangement. One day a more experienced art friend told me I needed to change my display because it was too confusing to viewers, too chaotic. Just as you said, people could not focus on any one image. I was dubious because I thought, what if that one picture doesn’t get seen that would sell, but I tried it and she was right. People could view more easily and that made it a better experience for seller and buyer.