Museum-Goer’s Wish List

A Museum-Goer’s Wish List
(in no particular order)
[work in process]

Nearly every sizeable museum now has a Collections Handbook, a softcover, 2/3-size for $20-something book that illustrates and explicates a selection of highlights, usually one to a page. My wish is that this handbook feature primarily, if not exclusively, works on permanent display. What I want is a souvenir of my visit, not a catalogue of what I’ve missed. Please leave out prints, photographs, textiles, Japanese screens and other categories of objects that must be rotated off view and are unlikely to have been part of my, or any museum-goer’s, visit. This won’t make the curators happy, but the Collections Handbook should be for the visitor who buys it, not the museum staff. (Moreover, prints and photographs are not unique objects; and while a museum may be proud of its Rembrandt or Dorothea Lange, it’s not a distinguishing feature of that museum.)

Every room in a museum should have either a gallery label or placard that places the works in context. Why have these objects been displayed together? It needn’t, and shouldn’t, cover every piece. It should, however, point me to the three or four objects I shouldn’t miss and indicate why they are important or archetypical. Room placards in the Dutch and Flemish galleries in the Louvre offered a mini-education and some very personal opinions that brought some potentially dead galleries alive.

Individual object labels should help me to better see or understand the object itself. Too many labels focus instead on biographical or subject matter detail that goes in one eye and out the other and neither furthers my appreciation of the object nor my understanding of art. For example, take the label for a portrait by Copley: instead of telling me that Banker So-and-So married Prudence Cartwright and financed ships in the molasses trade, tell me why Copley painted Banker’s head out of proportion to his body. Even worse were the MIA labels on Chinese pottery which told the uninterested museumgoer which excavation the vessel came from and what other museum owned a similar example.

Protecting the artwork is important but should be done in a way that doesn’t interfere with the museumgoer’s appreciation of the art. In other words, please don’t glaze paintings except where absolutely necessary. I.e., the Mona Lisa, yes; Lucretia, no. Also in heavily trafficked corridors, although masterworks won’t be there in the first place. The Barnes Foundation, where nothing is glazed, has a brilliant solution to the concern that viewers get too close: an inlaid dark band in the floor two feet (my estimate) from all the walls. Guards and guides simply have to ask the public once to respect the art and not cross the line in the floor. Museums that are so sensitive in conservation to preserve the original condition of their art should be just as concerned with the artist’s droit morale: no painter ever intended that his or her work be viewed through a pane of glass.

Non-art public amenities are a significant part of the museum-goer’s experience. It is too late to add plumbing to many museum buildings, but the visitor shouldn’t have to go to another floor, let alone the basement, to find a restroom. Once inside, the soap dispenser should find the visitor’s hands, not the sink or the floor. I don’t know the hygienic value of toilet seat covers, but they are standard in so many public facilities that I miss them when a museum restroom fails to provide them. A functioning water fountain is increasingly rare but welcome. And most of all, the checkroom should be sized and staffed to accommodate all expected crowds, and the line to retrieve a coat should be separate from the line to deposit. Museums in New York, where the weather is reliably fickle, are all in need of improvement, although I’ve never had the experience there I did at the D’Orsay, where the checkroom was full at 2 p.m. and no further coats could be accepted. One thing more: museums should be equipped to store a suitcase. Charge $5 or $15 to cover the additional burden, or make the visitor take it to a distant safe-zone, but recognize the occasional need of an out-of-town traveler who wants to visit the museum on the way to or from the train station or airport.