Museum Legs. Fatigue and Hope in the Face of Art

Why boredom and fatigue in museums?

Management consultant about museums: "Oh, I love museums. I just don't go."

museum legs = speaks of a powerful dynamic between museums and their visitors, between arts and the general public that implies a feeling of fatigue and disconnection

Education in museums is often inseparable from the experience of art and so is susceptible to visitors feeling at their ease. Museums must be hospitable and generous, have a desire to share or impart knowledge or understanding.

Museums are becoming broadcasting platforms. And much the same way one feels crazy talking back to the television, an exhibition-goers is often put in a receptive more than conversational frame of mind. 

The experience lends itself to the kind of learning that is taking of information, not the changing of the person who is the receptacle of it."

The tone of how a museum speaks to its visitors through labels is as telling as the tone of how two people speak to each other. Find a label that wasn't vague enough to be swapped with another label.

Boredom can be a symptomatic of disconnection between what is available and what one would like to do. And rather than reflecting laziness or and incurious character, boredom can be the marker of exclusion, of helplessness.

A museum decides what to show, how to describe it, how much to charge to see it and when to be open. Museums often emphasise the historical because museums are often run by historians. What should art do?