If it isn’t spreadable, it’s dead

Nina Simon specializes in advising museums on how to deal with Internets and their audience spawn. (Her blog, Museum 2.0, here, via Betsey Brock.)

Simon’s post about why museums should allow their audiences to take photographs is so obviously right it’s remarkable that she wrote it down, except, most museums don’t. Whip out a camera at the Seattle Art Museum only if you long to be chastised by a guard or two. Ditto the Henry.

Here’s the first point of her 5-point argument.

As long as it does not promote unsafe conditions for artifacts or people or illegal behavior, museums should prioritize providing opportunities for visitors to engage in ways that are familiar and comfortable to them. Yes, some people (especially vocal museum staff!) hate the sight of people taking photos in museums. But what about visitors? If your argument is based on visitor comfort and distraction, it should be backed up by visitor research, not personal impressions.

Would staff members who hate photography be comparably disturbed by visitors sketching in the galleries? Sketching takes up more space and is more distracting than photo-taking (and pencils could be used to damage objects!), and yet many museum professionals look benevolently upon that activity as a positive meaning-making visitor experience. This is prejudicial treatment. I know that many people are uncomfortable with the growing culture of self-documentation, but no one should let their own aesthetic preferences dictate others’ behavior without good reason.

I’m happy to report that SAM doesn’t engage in the prejudicial treatment Simon describes, allowing people to draw but not take photos. SAM won’t let people draw either, except with pencil.

Simon wants museums to give visitors more freedom. Half a century ago, Frank O’Hara had something similar to say to mothers:

AVE MARIA  
  

   Mothers of America
                                   let your kids go to the movies!
   get them out of the house so they won’t know what you’re up to
   it’s true that fresh air is good for the body
                                                                 but what about the soul
   that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images
   and when you grow old as grow old you must
                                                                   they won’t hate you
   they won’t criticize you they won’t know
                                                                they’ll be in some glamorous country
   they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or playing hookey

   they may even be grateful to you
                                                     for their first sexual experience
   which only cost you a quarter
                                                 and didn’t upset the peaceful home
   they will know where candy bars come from
                                                                       and gratuitous bags of popcorn
   as gratuitous as leaving the movie before it’s over
   with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the Heaven on Earth Bldg
   near the Williamsburg Bridge
                                                oh mothers you will have made the little tykes
   so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies
   they won’t know the difference
                                                  and if somebody does it’ll be sheer gravy
   and they’ll have been truly entertained either way
   instead of hanging around the yard
                                                        or up in their room
                                                                                      hating you
   prematurely since you won’t have done anything horribly mean yet
   except keeping them from the darker joys
                                                                   it’s unforgivable the latter
   so don’t blame me if you won’t take this advice
                                                                          and the family breaks up
   and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set
                                                                                         seeing
   movies you wouldn’t let them see when they were young