Art Without a Frame

The importance of context: What I learned from The Washington Post’s Joshua Bell experiment

Last week I saw a Facebook wall photo go viral with a thought-provoking editorial credited to a Josh Nonnenmocher*. Because this name screamed pseudonym, I didn’t bother to read it until it was shared by my friend (thanks Cecil!). I’m glad I did.

I was so inspired, in fact, that I thought I should share my two-cents here for you.

So this story was available to me through multiple channels, but because of the initial red flag (made-up name), I didn’t even give it a chance until it was recommended by a source that I respect and trust.


After a little digging, it turns out that this was actually an abbreviated version of this 2007 Washington Post social experiment and accompanying article Pearls for Breakfast by Gene Weingarten. Whether you’ve seen the Facebook version or not, this true version is considerably more eloquent and well worth the read.

Spoiler Alert

Here’s the Cliff Notes version: A street musician set up in a busy subway and masterfully played six carefully selected, timeless, works for about 43 minutes during the Friday morning rush hour. By the end of his set about 1100 people passed by and he’d collected a total of $32.17. Maybe a dozen people actively paid any attention at all, most of which were children. Here’s the kicker – the performer was Joshua Bell, widely considered one of the top violinists in the world, perhaps of all time. You might recognize him from the soundtrack for “The Red Violin.”


This WP article which offers streaming audio of the full performance, focused on the pretty sad fact that hardly anyone had stopped, or even slowed their pace to smell the roses. It was about the dwindling appreciation for beauty in a busy world. It was about spiritual starvation and a culture of oblivious focus.

My point

As a musician that has played for anonymous passersby in a few public areas around the country, these points were not lost on me. As a salesman that works primarily with marketing professionals, however, something else spoke to me. No one’s to blame. These DC bureaucrats weren’t cold, naïve boors. They were offered art without a frame. Or, “Sort of like handing out expensive wine from a cart in plastic cups” as described by ‘Daniel from Tel Aviv’ in Weingarten’s post Post post Q&A discussion. Without context, it’s extremely difficult to gain someone’s attention, let alone money.


Only a very specific person would be drawn to art without a frame. This is marketing with only one of the Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion). To the salesman in me, this is like trying to sell the ‘what’ without first providing the ‘why.’ As someone who works with websites, this is exactly why we are often educating marketers and executives on the value of content marketing and relational content... because in today’s culture of oblivious focus, it is not content that is king, but rather context. 

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*Reluctantly linking to the Nonnenmacher plagiarism