Sunday, February 13, 2011

Museum curators everywhere, listen up!

Especially at the Museu d'arqueologia de Catalunya in Barcelona...but it applies to you all.

PROVIDE SEATS!

Not only provide seats, but provide seating that looks at something to fill the mind with wonder.

Honestly.  Not every single person who comes through your galleries is hale, youthful and hearty.  Some are older, some are unwell, some have small children, and some simply want to sit and contemplate the wonders of the works before them.  Some even want to sketch!

WOW!

If you only provide seating that looks at the bathrooms, long hallways, walls, empty stairwells, cases filled with very small items all arranged flat on the bottom of the case or seats that are faced by images and texts that are too small to see or read without standing up and walking over your patrons leave unhappy.

If, however, you provide them places to refresh their aching backs, suffering from 'museum pace' or arthritic hips, or weary children that simultaneously fill their minds with wonder, they will return over and over.

It's like those d*mned architects that hate people, like the buildings should exist in perfection ignoring the realities of the people who use them.

Are you listening out there?

*crickets*

If the Louvre can do it, so can you!

Anyone out there?

*crickets*

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

cf. "Is that art or can I sit on it?".
Maybe there are plenty of seats, camouflaged at ambiguous works of art :D

Boo and Trev said...

Abolutely! My freind Jill has declared that if she is ever granted a superpower it will be to provide the most comfortable bench when ever you need it most

Anonymous said...

AAAAAAA-men.

!?!!!

XXnomad

HA maybe that's the problem...

Mother Theresa said...

I'll probably be going to Barcelona in about a month, so if I make a stop there, I'll put it in the suggestion box. They do have one of those, right?

oreneta said...

DO IT!!!!

Coffee?

oreneta said...

Helen...what is it they don't understand...honestly.

ELP, If I could have found some suitable art I would have sat on it...I was eyeing the guards to see if they were small enough to take out for their stools...that's not true actually, but it makes a good story. There was a large greek statue whose feet didn't look too bad, and it was a copy afterall.....

Boo, OK, that's the most sensivle thing I've ever heard of...where do we order her up that super power from anyway?

AaaaaaH! Men, indeed! That may well be it!