When Taste Stops and Judgment Begins: Learning to See Value in Art
Jess Castellote
When standing before Ben Enwonwu’s bronze sculpture “Africa Dances” at the Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art (YSMA), on Pan-Atlantic University’s campus, a visitor might say, “I like this sculpture” or alternatively, “This is a really good sculpture.” These statements sound similar—both are positive—but I believe they make fundamentally different claims: one about the perceiving subject, the other about the perceived object. After years of working at the museum and watching people react to artworks like this, I have come to realize that that they are actually saying two quite different things. Understanding the distinction between a statement of taste (of personal preference) and a statement of value is crucial not only for art criticism and museum education but for how we navigate questions of aesthetic judgment, cultural value, and the very purpose of art institutions.
A statement of TASTE—”I like this sculpture”—is a subjective declaration about the speaker’s preferences, feelings, or emotional response. It reports an internal, personal state: the sculpture pleases me, moves me, aligns with my sensibilities, or fits my mood or memories. That kind of statement is about the viewer, not really about the artwork itself. Importantly, there is no arguing with statements of taste or aesthetics preferences. They are largely immune to argument. If you don’t like it, you just don’t. If someone says they dislike “Africa Dances,” we cannot reasonably contradict them about their own experience. Simply, they do not like the sculpture. Full stop. Their feelings are their feelings. We might ask why they feel that way or what aspects provoke their response, but we cannot tell them they are wrong to feel as they do. David Hume, in his work “Of the Standard of Taste,” back in the 18th century, already pointed out how much taste depends on things like culture, education, and personal experience—everyone’s going to feel differently, and that’s fine.
But when someone says, “This is a good sculpture,” they are making a statement of VALUE, a much bolder move, a very different kind of claim. They are asserting something about the object itself by claiming the work has real merit, that it has qualities that stand on their own, whether any one happens to connect with it or not. Such statements of value, invite scrutiny, demand justification, and can be debated. They open the door to discussion. If someone claims Enwonwu’s sculpture is good, we can ask: Why is it good? What makes it so? Does it demonstrate technical mastery? Does it express something profound about movement, culture, or the African experience? Does it succeed in what it attempts to do? These are questions about the artwork’s objective qualities that can be intersubjectively recognized and discussed. In the case of “Africa Dances,” I could argue that the work possesses excellence, merit, and significance that exists independently of any single viewer’s response. I would point to Enwonwu’s incredible ability to capture rhythm and motion in solid bronze, something that’s very hard to pull off. Or the way he blends European modernist techniques with the deep roots of Nigerian bronze-casting traditions (Ife, Benin, Igbo-Ukwu). There is also the historical weight: created around the time Nigeria was finding its voice post-independence, the piece radiates cultural confidence and vitality. These are not just my preferences; they are aspects others can see and study. They can be debated among informed viewers. Of course, people might push back. Someone could say the fusion feels forced, or that other artists captured African dance more powerfully. That kind of back-and-forth is exactly what value judgments invite—and why they matter. The debate is impossible with mere statements of taste.
Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Judgment (1790) on aesthetics, argued that when we truly judge something beautiful, we are not just expressing private pleasure; we are claiming a kind of universal appeal, even if those standards of beauty are contested. It is not that everyone will automatically love it, but the qualities that make it excellent should be noticeable to anyone who looks carefully. Yet, I recognize that the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity in aesthetic judgment is more complex than a simple binary. Our subjective responses are not arbitrary; they are shaped by our cultural formation, education, experiences, and even our bodies. Someone raised with exposure to both African dance traditions and modernist sculpture will likely perceive dimensions of “Africa Dances” invisible to someone lacking that background. The sculpture doesn’t change, but what is objectively present in it becomes accessible to different subjects differently. That is why this distinction between taste and value feels so important to me, especially in a place like the YSMA. A museum’s mission is not primarily to display what the curator personally likes—that would be a statement of taste writ large. Instead, museums make institutional claims about value: we are saying these works deserve attention because they carry real artistic, historical, and cultural weight. We make an argument that these works deserve recognition.
This is a value claim, not merely a taste preference of those of us who work there.
When we guide visitors through a piece like “Africa Dances,” we are helping them move past “I like it” (or “I don’t”) toward something richer. To go beyond simple taste responses toward informed value judgments, understanding why the work might be considered excellent, even if it doesn’t immediately click for them. I believe education expands our capacity to perceive what is objectively present in artworks, making more of their qualities accessible to our subjective experience. I have seen visitors at YSMA who were indifferent at first—maybe the style felt unfamiliar—become genuinely moved once they learned about Enwonwu’s life, the context of Nigerian modernism, or the symbolism of dance in African traditions. Their taste often changed too, but the objective qualities in the bronze were always there; they just became visible to the perceiving subject. This is not to say that all value judgments achieve pure objectivity or that personal response is irrelevant to art. Rather, I suggest that while our experience of art is always subjective, artworks themselves have qualities we can discuss intersubjectively—qualities that exist whether or not any particular person responds to them. “Africa Dances” embodies Enwonwu’s technical skill, his historical moment, his artistic vision, and his cultural inheritance whether anyone happens to like it or not.
The beauty of keeping taste and value separate is that it gives us room to appreciate excellence even when it is outside our comfort zone and preferences. I might not personally connect with every work we show, but I can still recognize its craftsmanship, quality, relevance, depth, or importance. The YSMA, in presenting “Africa Dances” and works like it, invites visitors into both dimensions: the personal encounter that generates taste responses and the informed engagement that enables value judgments. That’s how museums like ours make space for cross-cultural respect and real growth. But, in the end, I believe both types of statements have their place. “I like this sculpture” expresses the irreducible particularity of a personal aesthetic experience. “This is a good sculpture” expresses art’s capacity to embody achievement, meaning, and significance that transcends individual preference. I see the museum’s educational mission as lying precisely in helping visitors understand that while their tastes are their own, learning to recognize artistic value opens worlds of meaning previously invisible, qualities that were always there in the bronze, waiting to be perceived.
I would recommend that the next time you are in front of a piece that grabs you (or leaves you cold), you pause and ask: Am I just saying what I like, or am I staking a claim to quality? Both have their place, but by distinguishing the two, we make the whole experience so much richer.
•Dr Castellote is the Director, Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art. Pan-Atlantic University
