Museums and the Hunt for ‘Real Culture’ on the Road
Travel Blog • Eva Holland • 08.14.09 | 11:01 AM ET
In a recent post over at BootsnAll, Roger Wade explains why he believes museums are overrated. “If you think about it, with only a few exceptions, museums are all history museums one way or another,” he writes.
The most famous ones display stationary art that only the elite classes could ever hope to own or even see. Sure, some of them tell the stories of what life was really like at the time, but many of them are idealized versions or nothing like reality at all ... History certainly has its place, but when you visit Madrid today might it not be more interesting to see some intricacies of modern big city Spanish life than what a lone artist a few hundred years ago was thinking?
Later, after offering some museum alternatives—grocery stores and the like—he adds: “You’ll learn far more about their real culture of today in a place like this than you would at the famous museum…”
Now, I’m a big fan of foreign supermarkets. But I’m also a bona fide history geek, and as such I’m worried about what seems to be an increasingly popular theme in travel advice these days: the idea that museums, and history more generally, are somehow distinct or cut off from a destination’s true culture. Does anyone really think that a visit to the Terror House won’t improve their understanding of post-Soviet Budapest? Or that the Transit Museum doesn’t shed some light on the way New Yorkers live? And I know, I know, we’ve all had Madonna-and-Child art gallery overload at some point—but trying to understand the Catholic world without taking a look at its most powerful iconography seems crazy to me.
Go ahead, call me a geek, but I’ll balance out a good people-watching session with some museum time any day. And I just don’t see how the one is more “real” than the other.
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Jennifer 08.14.09 | 11:24 AM ET
“You’ll learn far more about their real culture of today in a place like this (grocery store) than you would at the famous museum…”
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Who says that it has to be the culture of a place you are trying to understand when you go to a museum anyway? Museums don’t have to be tied to a culture in some way for them to be enjoyable or worthwhile!!!
Alicia Imbody 08.14.09 | 11:47 AM ET
Great point, Eva. Any destination- be it a museum, a market, or a subway station- in isolation can teach us very little about the soul of place. To say a museum is irrelevant is to deny a key facet of whatever makes a place unique and the history that drives the mundane day to day lives there today- we need both the arcane monuments and the modern establishments to contextualize either and begin to appreciate the whole. As in all things, balance is key!
Sophia Dembling 08.14.09 | 3:42 PM ET
I’m with you, Eva. I love museums not only to learn—and you never know what esoteric info you’ll stumble on—but also because I love looking at art and strongly believe art is a reflection of the culture from which it originates.
Besides, why set it up as either-or? I love grocery stores, too. And parks. And residential neighborhoods.
I’ll tell you what I do burn out on, though: churches.
Carl 08.14.09 | 10:24 PM ET
In a selfish way I love this trend: less people—people who don’t really enjoy the art anyway—clogging the museums, getting in my way as I try to spend a few minutes absorbing an artwork’s beauty and vision. Go to the Sistine Chapel and you’ll probably see people spending more time looking at their guidebooks than looking at the murals. They’re only there because the Sistine Chapel is famous, and has become a must-see. In truth, 80% of them don’t seem to care. (Maybe I’m being a bit harsh… )
On the other hand, I fear what will happen if less people go: Revenues will drop. And that will be bad for the museums—and bad for art lovers everywhere.
Ellen 08.15.09 | 12:40 AM ET
I completely agree with you! I love to visit museums as well as coffee shops and anywhere else people congregate when I travel. Although this may not be true of the people publishing their anti-museum agenda, most of the everyday people I hear hating on museums are the same ones who travel just to drink with other tourists and shop at stores carrying the same clothes they can buy back home.
Mary 08.15.09 | 8:31 AM ET
Thanks, Eva, for sharing your “museum” thought. We are part of history. Understanding comes not only from observing what is happening now, but from what has happened.