Jon Siegel / ジョン 米岡

Just read this article. It reminded me of my experience at the Louvre earlier this year. Waki was busy that day so I decided to take my time and enjoy one of the worlds most famous museums. After reading this article I’m not surprised, but I also agree with the quote in the article by Jean Michel Raingeard. To sum it up, while closely examining a particular painting, deeply enjoying the brush strokes and attention to fine detail, I was suddenly interrupted by a slap on the back. This man in a brightly colored t-shirt with a video camera in one hand waved his other hand angrily at me and said, “Can you PLEASE move?! Just MOVE.” I was totally surprised, and moved aside confused, only to see a woman in another brightly colored shirt and shorts strut in front of the painting and pose and spin around for the man with the video camera. I walked away, somewhat of proud of myself for not losing my temper and telling them off, only to find an array of idiocy as I’ve never seen before in a museum.

Thanks to a good upbringing from my parents and grade school art teachers who are also art lovers, I’m already familiar with museum etiquette. What I saw next was borderline absurd. At first, from a distance, I could only see a man and his family who were standing beside a giant ornate rock sculpture with many tiny details carved into it. As I got closer though, I realized what was happening, the man’s arm was wrapped inside the sculpture and he was openly trying to break off a piece of it! His family were all smiling as he tried to do this, it looked like quite a struggle for him. Again, do I run over and kick the guy for being stupid? I stood there for a minute, when a security officer walked over and beat him on the side with her clipboard and shouted at him to move away. As the family slowly wandered away, the wife took out her camera and started shooting photos of paintings in the adjacent room, with the flash turned on! Wow!

The longer I spent in the museum, the more I noticed few people cared about the quality and beauty of the works displayed and spent more time trying to pose for photos. Not to mention a large number of people slowly wandering around aimlessly with video cameras. What are they video recording? The paintings don’t move! If they can afford a video camera, then they can afford an art book with prints of the paintings.

I read another article earlier about certain museums banning cameras altogether, and people protesting it as a loss of rights and lamenting how nice it is to shoot photos in a museum. To be honest, I’m with the museums, ban the cameras altogether! It’s not the same as it was 10 years ago, not everyone had a camera then and people who did have a camera had the common sense to turn off flash. When I spend time at the museum, I’m there to appreciate the work and learn something from it, not get my photo next to the Mona Lisa. Although, I’m sure the majority would disagree with me, clutching their cheap digital camera in one hand, then off for lunch at McDonalds the next minute, since why would anyone ever want to eat French food in France? No doubt the same people petition for more Starbucks.