“In a museum, you know you’re being observed.”
Timothy Aubrey’s How to Behave in an Art Museum, published last spring in Paper Monument’s third issue, is making the online rounds. I simply adore this piece. Tim, who is a college professor, openly admits to the overwhelming sense of philistinism that I think most people—including those of us who work in museums and visit museums not-infrequently—actually do feel at some point in their museum going/loving/working careers, perhaps even guiltily so. But it’s true! Sometimes you—OK, I—just feel like skipping the full-floor retrospective altogether in favor of a curatorial assistant’s small, smart project space debut. Or even a room full of obscure objects more readily classified as artifacts, or instruments, or taxidermy than art.
Once, my best friend from art school, Corina, was visiting me here in New York from Olympia, where she lives. We rented bikes, donned obscene amounts of high performance fabrics, and spent the stunningly beautiful spring afternoon pedaling around Central Park, talking about all of the things we only talk about with each other. A break was deemed in order at a certain point, and I suggested that we pop into the Met.* I mean, I “pop into the Met” pretty frequently—it’s like a church to me, honestly, as are several other museums in the world. On that day, however, I just didn’t care and neither did Corina, even though we are of the demographic Who Cares. We skipped the art altogether, in fact, marching right past the guards and the throngs in our black spandex, sweating all over everything and everyone. We hopped the elevator straight to the roof deck, where we drank Snapple—very out of dietary character for both of us, I might add—and took lots of smiley pictures with my iPhone. Now, Mike+Doug Starn’s Big Bambú was indeed installed there at the time. But I would be lying through my teeth if I claimed that we gave a damn beyond a cursory “that would be fun to climb!” See: philistines. Athletic ones, at that.
Corina arrives again tomorrow, in the morning. I took the day off from work. Maybe we’ll behave like the finely-tuned museumgoers we really are, this time around—she’s six months pregnant, after all. Or maybe we’ll just skip the art altogether and go see a rock show instead.
*I should note here that the fact that I don’t have to *pay* to pop into any museum in New York City influences my museum-going behavior significantly. People, there are a few massive privileges small perks to working in non-profit institutions, and as every museum professional knows, the badge—and the reciprocal admission it entitles one to—is primary among them.
