How Long Do We Need to Spend Looking at Art
The Getaway
The Art of Slowing Down in a Museum
Ah, the Louvre. It'south sublime, it's historic, it's … overwhelming.
Upon inbound whatever vast art museum — the Hermitage, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Fine art — the typical traveler grabs a map and spends the next 2 hours darting from one masterpiece to the next, battling crowds, exhaustion and hunger (nonetheless never failing to take selfies with boldface names like Mona Lisa).
What if we slowed down? What if we spent time with the painting that draws u.s.a. in instead of the painting we recall nosotros're supposed to come across?
Virtually people desire to savor a museum, not conquer information technology. Nonetheless the boilerplate company spends fifteen to 30 seconds in forepart of a work of art, according to museum researchers. And the breathless pace of life in our Instagram age conspires to make that feel normal. Simply what's a traveler with a long bucket list to do? Blow off the Venus de Milo to linger over a less popular lady like Diana of Versailles?
"When you lot go to the library," said James O. Pawelski, the director of education for the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, "yous don't walk along the shelves looking at the spines of the books and on your fashion out tweet to your friends, 'I read 100 books today!'" All the same that's essentially how many people experience a museum. "They see as much of art as you lot meet spines on books," said Professor Pawelski, who studies connections between positive psychology and the humanities. "You tin can't really encounter a painting as yous're walking by information technology."
There is no right way to experience a museum, of course. Some travelers enjoy touring at a clip or snapping photos of timeless masterpieces. But psychologists and philosophers such as Professor Pawelski say that if you do choose to slow down — to find a piece of art that speaks to you and discover it for minutes rather than seconds — you lot are more than likely to connect with the art, the person with whom you're touring the galleries, maybe even yourself, he said. Why, you simply might emerge feeling refreshed and inspired rather than depleted.
To demonstrate this, Professor Pawelski takes his students to the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, home to some of the most important Post Impressionist and early modern paintings, and asks them to spend at least 20 minutes in front of a single painting that speaks to them in some style. 20 minutes these days is what three hours used to exist, he noted. "Simply what happens, of course, is you actually brainstorm to exist able to see what y'all're looking at," he said.
Julie Haizlip wasn't and then sure. A scientist and self-described left-brain thinker, Dr. Haizlip is a clinical professor at the School of Nursing and the Partitioning of Pediatric Disquisitional Care at the Academy of Virginia. While studying at Penn she was among the students Professor Pawelski took to the Barnes one afternoon in March.
Paradigm
"I accept to acknowledge I was a bit skeptical," said Dr. Haizlip, who had never spent 20 minutes looking at a work of art and prefers Keith Haring, Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock to Matisse, Rousseau and Picasso, whose works adorn the Barnes.
Any museumgoer tin practise what Professor Pawelski asks students such as Dr. Haizlip to do: Pick a fly and begin by wandering for a while, mentally noting which works are highly-seasoned or stand up out. And then return to one that beckons. For example, if y'all have an hour he suggests wandering for 30 minutes, so spending the next half-hour with a single compelling painting. Choose what resonates with y'all, non what'south virtually famous (unless the latter strikes a chord).
Indeed, a number of museums now offer "slow art" tours or days that encourage visitors to have their time. Rather than check master works off a list as if on a scavenger hunt, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, who oversees the education programs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, said yous tin make a sprawling museum digestible and personal by seeking out only those works that dovetail with your interests, exist information technology a beloved of music or horses. To find relevant works or galleries, inquiry the museum's collection online in advance of your visit. Or stop by the data desk when you arrive, tell a staff member nigh your fascination with, say, music, and enquire for suggestions. If the person doesn't know or says, "nosotros don't take that," enquire if at that place's someone else you lot can talk to, advised Ms. Jackson-Dumont, considering major museums are rife with specialists. Might you lot miss some other works by narrowing your focus? Perchance. Just equally Professor Pawelski put it, sometimes y'all get more for the price of access past opting to meet less.
Initially, cipher in the Barnes grabbed Dr. Haizlip. Then she spotted a beautiful, melancholy woman with cherry hair like her own. It was Toulouse-Lautrec'south painting of a prostitute, "AMontrouge" — Rosa La Rouge.
"I was trying to figure out why she had such a severe wait on her face," said Dr. Haizlip. Equally the minutes passed, Dr. Haizlip institute herself mentally writing the woman'southward story, imagining that she felt trapped and unhappy — all the same determined. Over her shoulder, Toulouse-Lautrec had painted a window. "There'due south an escape," Dr. Haizlip thought. "You just have to turn effectually and see information technology."
"I was actually projecting a lot of me and what was going on in my life at that moment into that painting," she connected. "It ended upwards existence a moment of cocky-discovery." Trained every bit a pediatric intensive-care specialist, Dr. Haizlip was looking for some kind of modify but wasn't certain what. Three months after her come across with the painting, she changed her practice, accepting a teaching position at the University of Virginia's School of Nursing, where she is now using positive psychology in health care teams. "There really was a window behind me that I don't know I would have seen," she said, "had I not started looking at things differently."
Professor Pawelski said it's even so a mystery why viewing art in this deliberately contemplative manner tin can increase well-being or what he calls flourishing. That's what his research is trying to uncover. He theorized, still, that there is a connection to research on meditation and its beneficial biological furnishings. In a museum, though, yous're non merely focusing on your breath, he said. "You're focusing on the work of fine art."
Previous inquiry, including a study led by Stephen Kaplan at the University of Michigan, has already suggested that museums tin can serve as restorative environments. And Daniel Fujiwara at the London Schoolhouse of Economics and Political Scientific discipline has plant that visiting museums tin accept a positive affect on happiness and self-reported wellness.
Ms. Jackson-Dumont, who has also worked at the Seattle Art Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Whitney Museum of American Art, said travelers should experience empowered to "curate" their ain experience. Say, for case, you do not similar hearing chatter when you look at art. Ms. Jackson-Dumont suggests making your own soundtrack at home and taking headphones to the museum so that you tin stroll the galleries accompanied by music. "I think people feel they have to behave a certain way in a museum," she said. "You lot can actually exist y'all."
To that end, many museums are encouraging visitors to take selfies with the art and mail service them on social media. (In example y'all missed it, Jan. 22 was worldwide "MuseumSelfie" twenty-four hour period with visitors sharing their best work on Twitter using an eponymous hashtag.) Selfie-takers oftentimes pose like the subject area of the painting or sculpture behind them. To some visitors that seems crass, distracting or antithetical to contemplation. Just surprisingly, Ms. Jackson-Dumont has observed that when museumgoers strike an art-inspired pose, it not only creates esprit amid onlookers but it gives the selfie-takers a new appreciation for the art. In fact, taking on the pose of a sculpture, for example, is something the Met does with visitors who are blind or partially sighted because "feeling the pose" tin permit them to improve empathise the work.
There will e'er exist certain paintings or monuments that travelers feel they must meet, regardless of crowds or lack of time. To winnow the list, Ms. Jackson-Dumont suggests asking yourself: What are the things that, if I do not meet them, will leave me feeling as if I didn't take a New York (or any other metropolis) feel? (Museum tours may too assistance y'all be efficient.)
The next fourth dimension you step into a vast treasure trove of art and history, allow yourself to exist carried away by your interests and instincts. You never know where they might lead yous. Before leaving the Barnes on that March afternoon, Dr. Haizlip had some other unexpected moment: She bought a print of the haunting Toulouse-Lautrec woman.
"I felt like she had more to tell me," she said.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/travel/the-art-of-slowing-down-in-a-museum.html
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