Museums and the Lost Art of ‘Slow Looking’

Photo by sergeymk via Flickr (Creative Commons)

In the New York Times this week, Michael Kimmelman watched tourists power-walking through the Louvre, and lamented the lost days of “slow looking” at museums and galleries. I enjoyed the article, and I can certainly relate—my first visit to Notre Dame, in Paris, was largely spoiled by a businessman who dashed up and down the aisles holding a camcorder over his head while shouting into a cellphone—but at the same time, if the faster-moving visitors aren’t actively disrupting the slowpokes, I don’t have much energy to condemn them.

After all, as Kimmelman himself says, there is “no single, correct way to look at any work of art, save for with an open mind and patience.” I think he had it right without the qualifiers.

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