Do you hate museums? I used to think I do.
I’d be there, perhaps with a class, or with family, and think to myself “okay, this is great — can we go home now?”. I’d have a hard time focusing on what was right in front of me, and it wasn’t because my mind was already looking forward to the next painting, sculpture or other form of creative expression. ‘No‘, I had been convincing myself, ‘it must be that I’m simply not a museum type person, period!’
How wrong. Such failure to capture the true issue.
The xkcd strip “The Problem with Wikipedia” is one of my favorites because it feels so me. I’ll come up with all sorts of peculiarities of life I, all of a sudden, wish to look up in the most random of moments. The iPhone is almost like an evil enabler in this, since it lets me do that even while in the most public (e.g. the tram) and most private (your imagination will have to do) of settings. I come up with one term, and my mind won’t stop craving answers, and Wikipedia, combined with its partners-in-crime on the World Wide Web, will deliver much more than I should care to know, but do care to.
It is in that context that not liking museums makes little sense; clearly, my intellect loves its very own kind of stimulation.
But there’s excuses for that.
Browsing Wikipedia can be done in the bathroom1 or in other comfortable ways; exhibits, on the other hand, tend not to offer many (if any) options for seating, even.
With the Web, I can click from one link to another faster than a blink of an eye; an art gallery, on the other hand, assumes and expects much more attention to each individual piece.
There are constant chicken-out options of closing the tab or window or even shutting the laptop’s lid, and boy, do I ever make use of those. Alas, for that, no-can-do at the Anne Frank house.
Those are valid reasons. They play a real role in my subconscious decision-making processes. For a long time, I had fail to question whether they were, in fact, sufficient reasons.
But they miss the real point: what do I do while and after finding random stuff on the Web? I share it. I pick out random quotes that are, in their self-contained brevity, weird or fun or interesting or possibly educational. I pick out amusing stuff and make it fit into this month’s Internet meme. Or maybe I just link and wait for someone else’s comment. I do those things.
In short, I give others my piece of mind, for whatever it may be worth, and ask for theirs in return — at the risk of blowing this out or proportion, it’s an exchange of thoughts leading to a greater common understanding. It’s a miniscule role by itself, but it adds up fast.
Based on my experience this week, that is what had been missing whenever I went to museums. Someone I could discuss things with as I saw them.
It certainly seems like an opportunity I’d like to have more often.
- Someone had to say it? ↩
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