Museums: January 2005 Archives

As I've mentioned before, I've always thought the "no flash photography" rules of many museums were just a scam to force people into buying their keepsakes at the gift shop. Seems this hunch has been vindicated. No, I haven't unearthed evidence of DaVinci's Louvre royalty payments piling up in a numbered Zurich bank account.

As part of the discussion on this site about solutions to overcrowding at MoMA, someone asked the apparently stupid question “Has it been scientifically proven that camera flash damages art?” Well, I think we all took it as a given that flash photography does in fact damage art despite my suspicions stated above. On a lark, I ran a couple of Google searches to come up with what must be plentiful evidence of the flash bulb’s nefarious effects. Nothing. After a few minutes, I ran across a reference to a message on a conservation email discussion list that actually argued that flash photography’s effects are nil. But I couldn’t find the entire post. I casually passed the info on to Dan Hopewell of Iconoduel. Dan’s more diligent than I (actually, he just knew where to look) and was able to come up with the post in question. Bottom line is, “300 amateur flashes a day is equivalent to adding five minutes to the display day.” In other words, no big deal.

Check out the complete story at Iconoduel.

Apparently the high entry fees designed to keep out the riff-raff didn't work. Tyler Green over at MAN is complaining that MoMA is so crowded that the art is in danger of being tampled. Among Tyler's suggestions are banning cameras and baby strollers. I've always thought camera bans were crass attempts to force you to make a visit to the giftshop for a postcard or poster. And as a new parent, I'm not too thrilled about the idea of a two-three year moratorium on my museum attendance. I was just getting used to the idea that a baby wouldn't be much problem to take on a gallery crawl.

Maybe they should just make the tickets $25. Still less than Disneyland.