I just stumbled across this pretty awesome photo on CollegeHumor and it really made me think about how people act and carry themselves in museums. You know we all have this preconceived idea about how you are supposed to act when in a museum, you know: arms folded, stroking your facial hair (if you have it), a furrowed brow, while silently contemplating works of art.
BUT WHY?
I mean truly we don’t have to be like that in a museum. If these dudes in the picture can show us anything it is that you can have a very fun and engaging experience in a museum if you shed that idea of a proper museum behavior and just have fun, interact and respond to the art as you feel so inclined to. While to some the Jesus YMCA might be offensive, but I think a lot of people find this even slightly humorous and would enjoy more instances of fun and loud museum behavior. To those people I would like to direct you to Jumping in Art Museums, a humble blog devoted to awesome pictures of people jumping in art museums. Are these people just really happy to be surrounded by awesome art? Were they particularly inspired by one of the works that all they could do was to document their reactions in this way? Who knows, but its pretty fun to look at. (For full disclosure, I do have a slight bias towards this blog, being that my girlfriend and I were featured when we sent in our picture of us jumping in MASSMoCA’s Sol Lewitt Wall Drawing Retrospective)
So what could this post be about? Maybe to get you thinking about what you would like to do in the Samek! We here warmly welcome any visitor to come and enjoy the space however you feel so inclined. (That is to say that it doesn’t actually do any damage to the art or anyone else, of course) So come on up, hang out (we got WiFi!), make noise, dance, meet with your classmates, and engage!