From the WSJ Opinion Archives
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Keep Moving
One museum's solution to the problem of crowds.
Ever seen the Mona Lisa? I mean really seen it--been close enough to experience it as the multifaceted work of art it is instead of the familiar, hackneyed pop-culture icon we know it as most of the time.
Probably not. You may have visited the Louvre in Paris, but most likely all you saw of Leonardo's famous painting were a few dissociated details--an eye, part of the smile, a fragment of the landscape background--through a screen of bobbing heads and jostling bodies.
Welcome to the modern museum experience. There is art in abundance, but a meaningful encounter with it is hard to come by.
Crowds in museums are nothing new. They've been a fixture of temporary "blockbuster" exhibitions for years. For a long time, the rest of the museum--the permanent collection--remained considerably less populated. Lately, though, the permanent galleries, too, have become more and more crowded. The new crush of bodies is partly the result of a surge of tourism, funneling out-of-town visitors into local venues, and partly the culmination of a long and steady increase in the public's interest in art.
During a trip to London earlier this month, I visited the British Museum, where 30 years ago, as a college student, I had spent an afternoon virtually alone with the Elgin Marbles. Not this time. The Parthenon sculptures are now so popular that, on the day I made my return visit, all the audioguides had been given out. So my children were forced to listen to me instead. Nearby, the Rosetta Stone was so mobbed that the only way to "see" it was to hold your camera aloft and hope that there would be a decent photograph to look at when you got home. The same conditions now exist at virtually every major museum here and abroad--the Tate Modern, the Louvre, the Museum of Modern Art, to mention only a few.
And who can complain? If the ideal of a democratic culture is to allow the largest number of people access to the greatest number of cultural treasures, then by any measure the ideal has been fulfilled beyond anyone's wildest imaginings. Art museums are now mainstream, the leisure destination of choice for a large segment of the population. Museums have responded by making more room--erecting new wings and buildings--and by offering amenities: restaurants, parking, places to shop, even concert halls.
But such efforts simply do not go far enough. If the point of a museum is to put great works of art on display to a broad public, then it should also matter what the experience of the art is like. In short, museums are obliged to help their visitors get the most out of the experience--and not be disturbed by their own jostling density. Museums have given insufficient attention to this challenge.
True, over the years they've experimented with various forms of crowd control--increasing the space between paintings, for example, or issuing a limited number of admission tickets every hour. Yet somehow the "Mona Lisa syndrome" persists. Indeed, it gets worse. The viewing conditions are now so difficult that, in the midst of a crowded museum, you find yourself wondering why the director and curators went to all the trouble to acquire such fine objects and persuade you to come look at them if they've made it impossible to really see anything. (I put this question to a panel of museum directors a few years ago and got a lot of nervous throat clearing in response.)
But one museum, I recently discovered, has addressed this problem with great success: The Tower of London. I was dreading the two-hour wait that I was sure my family and I were in for. After all, the Tower is home to the Crown Jewels, the crowns, scepters and other glistening ornaments symbolizing over 1,000 years of British royalty. These small objects are among the top tourist attractions in London. There would be, I was sure, many heads to block them.
To my surprise, it took only about 15 minutes to get in. I soon found out why. On either side of the long glass case in which the brilliant jewels are nested is a moving sidewalk that carries each visitor from one end of the display to the other. When you're finished you're allowed to go back and start again, but most visitors simply proceed to the exit.
The idea is ingenious. The track moves slowly enough that it is possible to look at every object with care and attention. That you can take as many "turns" as you like ensures that you can go back for another look if you find that you have missed something. Yet the continuous motion guarantees both a steady and relatively swift passage of visitors through the exhibit room (hence the short wait in line). The biggest bonus of all: Your review isn't obscured by crowds of people straining for a view. You can actually see.
I'm not saying moving sidewalks are (necessarily) the solution to the dilemma that art museums now face. But clearly officials at the Tower of London have figured out a way to manage a problem that other museums have not yet even begun to address. Art museums have won the battle for the public's interest and enthusiasm. Now they need to cure the Mona Lisa syndrome.
Mr. Gibson is the Journal's Leisure & Arts features editor.
