Trivialising the National Gallery

Picture: Bendor Grosvenor

National Gallery director Nicholas Penny has ardently promoted the value of looking at art. He's lamented the obvious and regrettable fact that many who visit the gallery don't look at the art very much, and he's done what he can to encourage engagement with pictures. He has promoted exhibitions of single pictures, to encourage slow looking. He has objected to the mass spectacles of blockbuster exhibitions, and spoken of the need to cater to single visitors as well as families, children and the socially excluded. It was striking that the NG's latest press release, immediately following the end of its photo ban, didn't include a quote from Penny.

The new press release tells us that the National Gallery is introducing free WiFi, which is useful mainly for foreign tourists who don't have UK data on the mobile contract. I don't begrudge it, but we may wonder why that's the top priority from a cultural budget we keep being told is impossibly tight. More inexplicable is the hyperbolic claim that this trivial change will 'enhance the experience of visitors and engage new audiences'. We could already access the internet in the gallery, and making the NG's own excellent online images freely available would allow people to share on social media.

The only thing that's truly original here is that we can now take selfies in the gallery. It's not just a picture of a painting, which is already available online, but a picture of a painting with you in the frame. That's not engagement. It's turning the focus inward on the visitor rather than outward to the artwork. The excitement about 'fresh and exciting' ways of 'exploring the collection' is technological determinism on steroids. The exciting thing should be looking at pictures, not sharing your own on Facebook.

There's a lot of hyperbole about how social media has utterly transformed the way young people look and think, and how allowing museum selfies will engage vast new audiences. But it's all a world away from what we actually see in a museum like the Louvre. We've all seen some tourists who takes a snap of each picture in turn, without looking at a single one. Does anyone really believe that these people are really keen art lovers who will go back and study their grainy snaps at home, when they haven't been able to sustain enough interest in the gallery to spare even the meanest glance directly at a picture? Who can honestly look at the scrum of photographers in front of the Mona Lisa and find themselves swelling with joy at the level of public engagement? Will the crowds of Mona Lisa snappers and selfie-makers will really want to download the NG's app so they can check out the iconography of Titian's Allegory of Prudence? I don't think it's snobbish or elitist to say that snapping without looking is an impoverished experience of art. In fact it's quite the contrary. Recognising the limitations of that experience is the first step towards promoting a more egalitarian spirit of inviting everyone to engage with art rather than patronising people by validating their disengaged snapping.

In another context Tim Parks recently wrote about the myth of popular fiction as a gateway to literary fiction. He quite rightly points out that reading Fifty Shades of Grey won't lead people to Tolstoy. A similar point can be made about art galleries. Encouraging visitors who aren't much interested in art on the basis that they can update their Facebook status and take a selfie isn't going to encourage engagement with art. I suspect it will have exactly the opposite effect. It will discourage people from sustained engagement, and encourage the idea that visiting an art gallery is all about tweeting selfies. AHN's claim that 334,000 'likes' for a crass celebrity selfie in a museum will translate to new visits to said museum is likely to prove sadly deluded.

The irony is that the information that the NG is actually providing - the content - is getting worse. They've just sacked their brilliant information department. Their website is woeful, and they've announced no grand plans to enhance it. Information on provenance and condition is sadly lacking. Sponsoring a free online version of Hall's Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art would be a better use of resources. I've often wanted to consult that in art galleries. But instead museums are devoting vast resources to trivial online 'engagement', like re-tweeting the most gushing enthusiasm and promoting tawdry interactive games. The Met has 70 (yes, seventy) people in its 'digital team'. And the same source reports that 52% of users of a game created by the Brooklyn Museum were museum professionals, mainly from Brooklyn Museum itself. We have a vast choice of online entertainment. Games that happen to have a museum theme are more enthusiastically received by museum professionals rather than visitors. 

The most persuasive argument presented in favour of permitting photography is that people have the right to enjoy galleries as they please. Indeed, why not have a gym in the Sixteenth Century Italian room, and a bar in the English Gallery? But given the large minority voting against photography in the Daily Telegraph poll, and the strong feelings that many of us have against photography, it is clear that at least a minority of people snapping pictures in galleries are experienced as intrusive. You simply cannot avoid the debate about the kind of galleries we want. I'm often struck by the difference between the rather fanatical demand that people must be allowed to behave as boorishly as they like in art galleries, in case they seem elitist and people are offended, and the ordinary acceptance of standards of behaviour in similar spheres like theatres and concert halls. Even football stadiums are governed by more rules than art galleries. Recently Manchester United banned iPads from home games! 

This debate pits me against many people I usually agree with. But I think the proponents are debating in bad faith by refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of any concern about photography in galleries. Bendor Grosvenor even claimed on Twitter that the debate is over, implying that there's no legitimate objection and nothing further to be said. But the inescapable reality is that many people's visits to museums have been ruined by intrusive photography. A Daily Telegraph poll currently has a remarkably high 43% opposed to photography in the National Gallery. Celebrated critic Michael Kimmelman has lamented that 'At the Louvre, many stop to snap but few stay to focus'. And I thought AHN's illustration, which I've pinched for this post, unintentionally telling. This is indeed the view we'll have of Titian in future; a great painting with a bloody big iPad in front of it. A colleague recently complained to me that his view of an exhibition at Tate Britain was interrupted by a visitor who held his iPad right up against details of each picture in turn to take pictures. That really is more intrusive than a crowd of people looking at a picture.

There is a reasonable case to be made saying that's tough, and the benefits of allowing photography outweigh the costs. But that debate cannot be closed down by diktat, and people's very real concerns cannot be rejected as false consciousness. I can recognise the benefit of being able to take pictures of frames and displays and details that aren't otherwise available. But the Panglossian claims about people going to the gallery for the first time because they want the change to get a selfie with a Van Gogh and becoming ardent art fans is, to put it mildly, unproven. And the costs of photography are clear to see in places like the British Museum and the Louvre.