EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Train Stations or Museums?

It’s somewhat fitting that twenty years ago the French transformed an unused train station into a major museum because, ever since, major museums have been turned into train stations. The Musee D’Orsay is no less crowded now than it was, filled with passengers, a hundred years ago. At the Louvre, today’s travellers line up at the ticket office while waiting to dash to Italian Renaissance paintings on the far side. Others, exiting from the Richelieu wing, cross the same space to find the track for Dutch masterpieces up a different escalator. In New York MoMA spent vast sums remodelling their own entry-hall into someone’s idea of a subway. The Met, thinking perhaps of Grand Central Station, keeps high-back wooden seats on either side of its grand hall with a circular information desk in the center.  

This fixation on train stations is no doubt linked to the desire of museum directors to increase their visitor numbers, an objective which, wherever achieved, ruins the aesthetic experience of their current visitors . As numbers increase, so do the distractions. Last week two women gossiped near a Gauguin. In the next room a toddler screamed and a guide bellowed nonsense about a painting. You can do almost anything in a museum, including behavior forbidden in a concert or play – or even a library. Museum directors who are ultimately responsible for the chaos in their galleries don’t seem to care. Quite the contrary. Most want more visitors, moving in lines to the masterpiece on Track 24. Oh, and please buy a souvenir on the way out.