Previous Posts: articles 2018
On taking selfies in the National Gallery (ctd.)
August 17 2014
Picture: Independent
Here's probably the best article on the whole photo thing yet, by Archie Bland at the Independent. It's not only well written, but he's got some useful further thoughts from others, including Susan Foister at the National Gallery:
"I spend a lot of time watching how people look at the art, and I don't think I've seen any great change in approach," says Dr Susan Foister, the gallery's director of public engagement.
"Yes, you always want people to be drawn in by a single work – but we have six million visitors a year, and probably there are six million ways of looking at the art. We think it's important to offer lots of ways in. The National Gallery has always been a public space. You have to consider that other people may not enjoy it the way you do."
Quite. Do read the whole piece, but here's his conclusion:
In the meantime, if you don't like cameras in museums, the solution is simple: don't take one. A punter with an iPhone is no more obtrusive than one with a sketchbook unless you have a chip on your shoulder.
Update - but Neil Jeffares tweets:
[...] constant shutter clicks; iPhones, iPads, large DSLRs; shoot pntg, then label, move on [...]
Which doesn't sound quite as encouraging.
Update II - but another reader writes:
It occurred to me today while visiting today – and not too disturbed by photographers – that there might be one really useful upshot of this development. We won’t have to wait for the Gallery to upload images of cleaned works to its site. And they can take years.
Update III - a reader adds:
The purpose of museum rules is to prevent harm and to accommodate the public and the institution. It is now clear that photography unlike smoking is harmless and nearly unpreventable so the battle won further debate is moot.
But another disapproves:
I think that the National Galleries policy on photography is a bad mistake & the Gallery over night has gone from broad sheet to tabloid. Management probably had little idea about the numbers of visitors snapping away, in many cases for the sake of it with little appreciation of what they are taking. The signs next to paintings that may not be photographed are too small & ambiguous resulting in most people ignoring them & taking pictures anyway. This means that those owners who do not want their paintings photographed are having their wishes ignored. One lady came into a very popular room yesterday with a small camera mounted on a monopod. Resting the monopod on her tummy, with camera effectively sitting on top of a long stalk, she grinned from ear to ear before doing a ‘selfie' in front of a prohibited painting before staff could take action in the crowded room! Some visitors who wish to view the art works quietly & appreciate it are complaining that their experience is spoilt by throngs of people obsessed with snapping away & in some cases getting far too close to the paintings.
Update IV - another photo-approver writes:
Those who are objecting to photography in the NG seem to be confusing correlation with causation. Some people may take pictures in a gallery without looking at the subject but they do that at sports matches and concerts too (in spite of there usually being several cameramen present to document the thing in great detail). This type of consumption is a behaviour in society at large and is not restricted to nor encouraged by galleries allowing photography.
Neither is it a new phenomenon of the Facebook generation (of which i'm one). Robert Hughes said a while ago (70s judging by his hair) that people no longer went to look at an artwork, they come to have seen it. This is presumably in part because they've already seen the famous works/buildings/sights before they arrive - nobody who sees the Mona Lisa is seeing it for the first time.
Yes those people should look a bit closer and longer but there are many different ways of looking at art and many different reasons people take pictures. Sometimes you want to wander round slowly and sometimes you nip in when you have 10mins spare round Trafalgar Sq. Sometimes you want T20 and sometimes you want a test match.
Luke Syson said in an interview about designing the Leonardo exhibition that people often spend longer looking at the label than the picture, which suggests that there is more to the experience of art than just the image and people like to have context and be informed. Taking the odd snap for research, posterity, fun is presumably part of that too.
Surely what matters is fostering a bit of politeness and courteous behaviour in public spaces, something galleries could encourage a little by employing some crowd management so the numbers remain enjoyably atmospheric without being unworkably rammed. This would be a much better use of the NG's time than preventing people from enhancing their visiting experience. Also from a PR point of view the NG has managed to look like they've been forced into this when it could have been a positive announcement about them embracing technology with wifi.
Update V - a US reader writes:
As a faithful reader of Art History news and The Grumpy Art Historian I have been following the debate regarding photography in the National Gallery. In particular I have been interested in looking at the pictures of those taking pictures in the gallery.
I have asked myself why the need to take the pictures. While they may of course they may purchase a postcard or poster of a favorite painting, it occurred to me the draw to take the picture is it somehow becomes more personal experience when they do.
We learn through our senses and not being able to touch the art work the next best thing is to take the picture.
In those few moments perhaps there is a connection between the viewer and the art. Living in the USA I have had only a few opportunities to visit the National Gallery. To give myself the best experience I arrive when it opens for the day having a better chance of fewer people and time to really look.
All this being said, I believe there is room for those who take pictures and those who don't. We all "look" in our own way.
History of the Musee d'Orsay
August 16 2014
Picture: Google Cultural Institute
If you haven't seen it, here's a good online illustrated history of the Musee d'Orsay. At one time, after the station was abondoned (above), it was going to be pulled down and a new hotel built (below). Can you imagine?
On taking selfies in the National Gallery
August 16 2014
Picture: Guardian
Good piece in the Guardian by Zoe Williams on the National Gallery's photo policy:
[...] I have some good news for the purists: there was nobody taking selfies in the National Gallery on Thursday; nobody except me. It's possible that this memo hasn't got out yet, and not enough people know that it's allowed. But I think I can exclusively reveal the real reason: it is technically extremely difficult, but never quite difficult enough to distract you from the exquisite embarrassment.
People taking photos of art with their phones divide into two categories: thoughtful, discreet snappers of obscure tiny portraits of princesses, and everyone else taking pictures of Van Gogh. It seemed fitting to me that Van Gogh would be the go-to guy for an iPhone photo; he's the painter (I like to think) who would find the trend the most depressing.
[...]
You can't take a selfie without going for the original selfie, Rembrandt's Self-Portrait at 63. The problem with the positioning of this painting is that Rembrandt comes out slightly better from the lighting, so I ended up looking older than 63. Also, this is one of the most venerated paintings in the gallery, even the nation. The disapproval in the room flooded towards me. I thought I heard someone hiss. It was like that bit at the end of Dangerous Liaisons when Madame de Thing is booed at the opera.
[...]
In short, there is nothing to fear, for either the art crowd or the custodians of the human spirit. The National Gallery will not be overrun by people taking selfies for the same reason it is not full of people in bikinis; we humans have a keen sense of humiliation, exposure, pride, vulnerability. That's what makes us worth painting in the first place.
Update - and here's the leading french art history blogger Didier Rykner of Tribune de l'Art saying that in two hours at the Louvre recently he was not bothered once by a photo taker. He applaudes the National's new policy.
Update II - but here's an editorial in The Guardian saying photos shouldn't be allowed in any art gallery:
it would in fact be simpler and better for both the pictures and the public if no photography was allowed at all. Looking at the art may be an old-fashioned priority, but it ought to be the essential one, all the same.
Typical Guardian preaching; it knows better, and must tell people how to behave and think?
Update III - anti-photoist Jon Sharples tweets this selection of Sunflower selfies:
As I've said before, I have no problem with (discretely taken) gallery selfies at all. Can anyone really object to people being this happy to be in front of a Van Gogh?
Update IV: the Grumpy Art Historian objects very much indeed, still, and agrees with the Guardian. Unlike Zoe Williams, he saw selfie-takers everywhere (he went today to report from the scene). He also saw a few flash takers, and reports that the guards aren't that interested in telling people not to use flash. This last point puzzles me, for if they leapt on the flash users with the same vigour as they used to leap on the photo takers (I saw many times loud shouting from the other side of a room) the practice might soon stop. But we maybe learning more here about a demoralised staff threatened with losing their jobs, as I've reported before, at least if the vigour with which they're criticising their employer's own rules and policies is anything to go by.
Guercino stolen in Italy
August 16 2014
Picture: Gazzetta del Sud
The above painting by Guercino, a 1639 Madonna with Sts John the Evangelist and Gregory Thaumaturgus has been stolen from a church in Modena, in Italy. The picture, thought to be worth about £5m, is large, 293 x 184.5 cm, and was removed in its frame, which can hardly have been the work of a moment. Gazzetta del Sud reports that was uninsured, and the alarm system had been turned off, because 'it was expensive to keep up.'
In my experience, alarms (even fancy art ones) don't cost much to run at all after they're installed. This particular alarm had been installed in the early 2000s. Incompetence or an inside job? Or simply another example of the chaos of Italian heritage protection?
Bidding up your own stock
August 15 2014
Picture: Joseph Daniel Fiedler in Gallerist
There's an interesting article in Gallerist by daniel Grant on how many contemporary art dealers 'manage' auction prices on behalf of their artists:
When artists agree to be represented by a gallery, they usually work out with the gallery owner such matters as the amount of the dealer’s commission; how often their work will be exhibited in solo or group shows; the price of their artworks; that sort of thing. Another expectation, usually not as explicitly stated but increasingly crucial, is that the dealer will attempt to control the market for the artist’s work even after it has been sold. Some dealers go so far as to bid up, and even buy, pieces when artworks are consigned to auction. The practice is legal.
“I have bid up prices to appropriate levels, when auction houses have estimated too low works by artists whom I represent,” said Manhattan gallery owner Renato Danese. “I want to protect the work from going below the low estimate or not selling at all, because that puts a cloud over the work and over the artist.” Disappointing results at auction can potentially come back to haunt works sold at the gallery. “I don’t like to spend fruitless hours explaining why a good piece went for a quarter of the price I charge at the gallery.” He added that “artists expect me to protect their market and their reputations.”
Happily, Old Master dealers do not do this for, say, Gainsborough.
Update - a reader writes:
On bidding up, I remember a certain St James's dealer doing this in the 1990s, to protect the value of the Edwardian watercolour artist whose works he'd become closely invested in. So it's not only contemporary art.
Does flash photography really damage paintings?
August 14 2014
Picture: BG
Effectively not, and no more than normal light exposure, according to this paper by Dr Martin Evans. It's worth reading in full, but here are some key parts.
First, the National Gallery did a test in 1995 to see how pigments reacted to extreme and repeated use of flash. The answer was, not much:
These trials showed that 'fugitive' pigments deteriorated while on the walls of a controlled-light gallery at about the same rate as if a modest 'hotshoe' flashgun was fired at them every 4 seconds from a distance of about 4 feet [over a million times!].
Following these tests, the National Gallery decided that professional photographers could use flash when photographing their paintings. The crucial thing to note here is, as Dr Evans says:
In practice almost all small camera-mounted flashguns now incorporate a correction filter to bring the xenon light balance close to natural daylight. These filters also remove most of the UV wavelengths which conservators fear.
He goes on to note that the problem is even less of a concern for smartphones, which, no doubt, is how most gallery visitors will be taking photos (or selfies):
Many 'smartphones' include an illuminator that may be a tiny xenon flash, or a light-emitting diode (LED) that briefly flashes light onto the subject. It is hard to estimate the power of these little illuminators in terms of strict guide numbers, but the consensus is that they can be rated at GN 2 to GN 4. Clearly, flashes from 'smartphones' cannot be regarded as a conservation threat in any properly lit gallery.
He concludes:
Is it worth getting steamed up about such a tiny extra quantity of light, as far as pigment fading is concerned? Several photographers have already suggested that any trifling damage done by a few hundred of these little flashes in a day could be fully offset by closing the gallery and turning off the lights a few minutes early. A ban would be justified in rare cases, where large numbers of photographers might be taking many flash photographs very close to something that could reasonably be considered photosensitive. The more advanced (and expensive) cameras used by serious photographers also have a built-in flash facility. The flash units fitted in digital single lens reflex (DSLR) cameras have guide numbers in the range GN 10 to 14 - somewhat more powerful than those built into the small cameras. However, these DSLR and similar advanced cameras can now take photographs at such high ISO sensitivity settings that their users seldom need to use flash. Does the ban on photography in some galleries really reflect a genuine, though misplaced, fear of light damage, or is it part of a hidden general anti-camera attitude by some administrators?
[....]
There are therefore some plausible reasons why a museum or gallery might decide to ban the use of photographic flash. However, to prohibit the use of flash on the grounds that it will harm the exhibits is the least plausible reason of all.
Of course, I absolutely agree that flash photography should be prohibited in galleries and museums, not least for the disruption it causes other visitors. The point of this post is merely to rebut the widespread belief that flash photography kills paintings.
Photography in galleries - Van Dyck's view
August 14 2014
Pictures: British Museum
I was asked on the BBC yesterday whether great artists of the past would have approved of photography in museums. My answer was unhesitatingly yes, as the sketchbooks of Old Master artists around the world attest. I cited Van Dyck's Italian sketchbook, which, as you can see from the page above [from the British Museum], contains hundreds of lightning quick drawings as he captured what he could from the great masterpieces by the likes of Titian that he went to Italy specifically to see. If he'd had a smartphone, you can bet he would have been an avid snapper of great paintings.
Can you imagine someone saying to Van Dyck, 'no, you cannot make a sketch of that Titian, I insist you simply look at it for a long time instead'? Those who say we must ban photography to make people appreciate art 'in a better way' make the same argument.
By the way, while I'm on Van Dyck's Italian sketchbook, allow me to show you perhaps my favourite drawing by him. It's a beautifully observed drawing of an ostrich. To the right of the image, however, is a hurried sketch of the ostrich head-on, with its wings flapping. Above it, Van Dyck has written; 'If the ostrich gets angry, run'.
Update - Nathaniel Hepburn, the new director of the Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft, tweets:
I am an avid photographer in galleries & it is patronising to be told that I am 'shooting not looking' by some in the NO campaign. How do they know how long I have looked before shooting, and many times after. Grrr
But Jon Sharples tweets:
This sort of specious reasoning is very bad for @GrumpyArt's health!
Dr Matt Loder of the University of Essex tweets:
I don't always see eye-to-eye with @arthistorynews but on photography in the NG I am in rapturous agreement!
If you're not on Twitter by the way, I do recommend it, and all the above are worth following.
Update II - a reader writes:
I hadn't seen the Van Dyck Ostrich before your post today, so thank you for including it, such a fun sketch and now also one of my favourites.
Restoring Le Brun's 'Jabach and His Family' (ctd.)
August 14 2014
Picture: Met Museum
I mentioned recently that Met curator Keith Christiansen is charting the restoration of their recently acquired portrait Everhard Jabach and his Family by Charles Le Brun on his blog; now he's highlighting something I didn't know, that there were two versions of the picture. The other (above, right) was in a museum in Berlin, and destroyed during the war. The question is, however, which one is or was better? Christiansen says he;
[...] worried about this as we entered into negotiations for the purchase of the picture.
But concludes;
the quality of the Berlin painting is vastly inferior: the figures have a smooth, almost airbrushed quality and lack the expressive liveliness of those in the Metropolitan's version. No wonder that in the eighteenth century, the Metropolitan's painting became a principal sight in Cologne—it's noted in guidebooks to the city and was seen by the great poet-philosopher Goethe as well as by the British painter Sir Joshua Reynolds. In contrast, the Berlin version was reputed to have been painted in part by the workshop.
Update - a reader writes:
This feels like rubbing salt in to a wound.
Really interesting though – pity the National doesn’t do blogs. Would this be your next campaign?
Bowes' altarpiece 100% funded.
August 14 2014
Picture: ArtFund/Bowes Museum
Good news - the Bowes Museum has today raised the £21,000 they needed to restore their 15th Century Flemish altarpiece.
Footballers as Old Masters
August 14 2014
Picture: Mirror
The faker turned artist and TV present John Myatt has painted some famous footballers in the guise of Old Masters. Above is Andrea Pirlo as the Mona Lisa. Sort of. More here.
Are you the 'South Ken Scrubber'?
August 14 2014
Picture: Christie's
There's an art dealer out there somewhere whose modus operandi seems to be this: buy a cheap but vageuly enticing-looking old picture in a far flung auction house; give it a fairly brutal 'clean' with acetone and a brillo pad (by the look of it); and then consign it to Christie's South Kensington. I don't knwo who it is, but I call them 'the South Ken Scrubber'.
The above portrait of Charles I sold at Christie's South Kensington in July for £5,000 inc. premium looking like this. It had previously sold at Chorleys auction (as below) in Gloucestershire for £2,200 (exc. premium). After commissions, Vat and travel 'the Scrubber' might have made a few hundred quid. But the picture is damaged forever.
Brits in France
August 14 2014
Picture: Louvre
If you're in France, some British works from the Louvre are on display at the Museum of Valence (till 28th Sept). The exhibition includes sixty works from British 18th Century artists, included Gainsborough (above), Reynolds, Lawrence, Turner and Constable. It sounds like it may be a rare chance to see the Louvre's British pictures - whenever I go, there are usually hardly any on display.
More here.
Private sales at Sotheby's
August 13 2014
Picture: Sotheby's
There's a curious snafu over at Sotheby's New York, where, in response to some shrewd digging around by the journalist Philip Boroff, a senior executive has got shirty with ArtNet, apparently threatening them with 'minimal cooperation' 'going forward'. Boroff had discovered that Sotheby's much-vaunted private sales figures were far less rosy than had been presented.
Photography at the National Gallery (ctd.)
August 13 2014
Picture: Katy Perry
Katy Perry (a pop star, m'lud) has 6.7m followers on Instagram, and earlier today she posted this 'selfie' from the Art Institute of Chicago (in front of Grant Wood's American Gothic). It's already generated 334,000 'likes'. In other words, if she took a similar photo in the National Gallery this week (as opposed to last week, when she'd have been shouted at), it would probably encourage more first time visitors to the Gallery than any amount of money spent on 'outreach' or advertising.
Anyone wanting to send in a (discretely taken) selfie from the National Gallery is more than welcome!
Update - In his latest contribution to the debate, The Grumpy Art Historian says I'm 'sadly deluded' that images like Perry's above will translate into new gallery visits.
But just in time, a reader writes:
Regarding the National Gallery photography campaign, you deserve much thanks and congratulations for raising the debate.
Your point about Katy Perry is terrifically important; as a forty one year old teacher I am well aware of how many light years away from the teen-culture-zeitgeist I exist, but the simple act of a pop star like her showing an active interest in visual art is genuinely having an influence on a younger generation of people who are already motivated and inspired by, as well as engaged in, music as an art form. When she toured England in May, she posted selfies she had taken in the British Museum, talked about her visit there when she was on stage at the O2 Arena, and encouraged her (predominantly) early-secondary-school-female demographic to go and explore the place themselves. Her recent visit to the Magritte exhibition in Chicago resulted in this heart-warming Facebook post [which encourages people to see the Magritte exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago]:
She's also supported local gallery shows by American 'Lowbrow' artist Mark Ryden. After all, in my own shallow experience, it was a simple comment by a singer in a band I liked which made me decide to go to see the Munch exhibition in London back in the early 1990s, and to which I owe my consequent life-affirming delight in art. The education departments at institutions like the NG, RA and British Museum could learn a trick or two from potent cultural 'mavens' such as Ms Perry when considering how to motivate the country's adolescent constituency.
Update II - this is still quite a media story: I've been asked to be on BBC Breakfast and Sky News so far today. Alas, I can't do either.
Update III - a reader writes:
Me, I want to have my cake and eat it too: no crowds to block my view, wide access to and popularity of art, and the right to take photos too. Is a partial compromise the setting by the museum/gallery of half-days or blocks of hours when no (guided?) groups are allowed? I don't know how wide-spread this practice is or isn't, or whether it works...
Update IV - in The Daily Telegraph, arts editor Sarah Crompton decries the National Gallery's decision:
[...] there is a distinct difference between learning about the art on the walls, and recording it without giving it a moment’s reflection.
As a parent, I try to get my children to stop, look and listen, without a screen in front of their eyes. There are so many distractions, that it is difficult for all of us to pause just for a moment and listen to the birds sing – both literally and metaphorically.
For centuries, art has been a way of making us slow down, and taking a moment to examine something in detail. This is not a plea for silent or empty galleries but for more thoughtful ones. One of my favourite moments in a gallery not so long ago was when I heard two women, in front of Titian’s Diana and Actaeon making up their own story for the events depicted.
The exchange was both loud and hilarious. But it was entirely engaged and committed. Something from one place had reached into another and prompted a reaction. To me, that is what art does.
By allowing photography, galleries are betraying all those who want to contemplate rather than glance. Surrounded by the snappers, they may come to think that this is the acceptable way to consume art, a kind of constant grazing without any real meal.
That’s not a means of making art more popular or accessible. It is the surest path to depriving it of all purpose and meaning. It is a trend that the National Gallery should have been committed to fight.
So another case of we must make people look at art the way we want them to. It's like telling diners at a fancy restaurant; you can only eat the food if you hold your knife and fork properly.
2 days left to help restore 15th Century altarpiece
August 13 2014
Video: Bowes Museum/ArtFund
The Bowes Museum is close to raising the £21,000 they need to restore a fine 15th Century Flemish altarpiece. The fundraising, which is being led by the ArtFund on their new Art Happens site, is 89% completed, with just 2 days left to go. So if you've got a few spare spondoolees, please help them out. There's a range of goodies on offer too.
I'm pleased to see that the Bowes campaign (which I've plugged here twice before) is the most funded project on the new Art Happens site. So if readers have contributed already, many thanks. It's good to know that a campaign to restore a 15th Century anonymous painting in the North of England has gotten far more traction on the Art Happens site than the appeal to raise £25,000 to pay for a Chapman Brothers exhibition (which is only at 68% funding, despite the recent burst of 'publicity' for the show).
Update - it's now at 96%, one hour after posting the above. Anyone want to be the crucial final donor?
Update II - 14.8.14: they've got to 100%. Well done all contributors.
Martin Kemp - 'save the Warburg'
August 13 2014
Picture: Warburg Institute
In the Royal Academy magazine, the great Leonardo scholar Martin Kemp argues against the University of London's plans to undermine the Warburgh Institute, which he calles:
the greatest act of vandalism in Western academia of my lifetime.
Strong stuff. More here.
Update - a reader writes:
I could not agree more with Martin Kemp on the threat to the Warburg....it would be a huge and irrecoverable loss. The more attention that can be drawn to this the better. I notice on their website that they are advertising for a new director....perhaps Martin Kemp himself could be persuaded? It is certainly going to need a strong personality with a high academic profile to do what's needed to save it.
Update II - on his blog, Charles Saumarez Smith, formerly director of the National Gallery and now running the Royal Academy, writes:
I arranged with the Warburg Institute to take my son to visit its library and archive. I had scarcely been back since I was a postgraduate student there in the late 1970s. Little has changed: the open access stacks of the library arranged according to Warburg’s intellectual principles, such that a Renaissance treatise is shelved next to the latest offprint; the gunmetal grey filing cabinets of the Photographic Collection where I worked every Friday. I had never seen the archive which was established in the early 1990s to make Warburg’s own papers more publicly available. They still have serried ranks of card index boxes in which Warburg developed the intellectual system of his ideas, neat little rows of notes interleaved with articles, images and transcripts from early twentieth century books and journals. What comes across is the continuing relevance of Warburg’s ideas and the intellectual integrity of the library as a whole, which makes it more baffling that London University should have challenged the terms of the Warburg family’s 1944 deed of trust in court.
Robots at Tate Britain
August 13 2014
Video: Tate
Tonight, you can take control of a robot going around Tate Britain. More details here.
Of course, the Google art project allows you to pretty much do this any time you like, and much more effectively.
Update - I had a look at this, and boy was it weird. It looked like a 1980s video game, with image quality to boot.
Henry Moore at King's Cross
August 13 2014
Picture: Guardian
The newly renovated King's Cross concourse is terrific (as an Edinburgh resident it's now how I get into London), and has just been made even better by the loan of a fine Henry Moore sculpture. More here.
Photography to be allowed at the National Gallery? (ctd.)
August 13 2014
Picture: BG
Further to my posts below, the National Gallery has today issued the following press release:
The National Gallery introduces free Wi-FiFree .
Wi-Fi is now available throughout The National Gallery – the first of a number of major steps the Gallery is undertaking to provide a warmer welcome for visitors.
Director of Public Engagement Dr Susan Foister said “We are proud to introduce Wi-Fi to the Gallery, heralding new plans to enhance the experience of our visitors and to engage a broader audience. We know that when people feel inspired they often like to share the moment, so along with the free Wi-Fi service we are now welcoming visitor photography: from now on people will be able to share their experience of the Gallery and its paintings with friends and family through social media.”
Free access to the internet whilst in the National Gallery – and now a mobile enabled website - means visitors can explore the collection in fresh and inspiring ways. Now when they’re standing in front one of the 2,300 paintings from the 13th to early 20th century, they can instantly, in their hands on their smartphone or tablet, find out all about the artist who painted it and the stories being told, along with the techniques and materials used. Wi-Fi also means we can interact with our visitors in real time via social media and they can share all their in-gallery experiences with friends, family and networks. Now for the first time National Gallery visitors can Check In on Facebook using the some of the most popular paintings in the collection, they can comment about their favourite works on Twitter using the hashtag #MyNGPainting and they can post pictures of the rooms they most enjoyed visiting on Instagram.
For international visitors, this means accessing information in different languages, as well as being able to use translation tools. Wi-Fi also opens up the possibilities for including interactive digital elements in our future exhibitions such as multimedia guides or smart phone apps.
The Super Connected Wi-Fi scheme is funded and supp orted by the Mayor of London and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy Ed Vaizey said "Free public Wi-Fi in the National Gallery will allow visitors to engage with the masterpieces that adorn its walls in completely new ways. I'm delighted that Government's Super Connected cities programme has made this exciting new development possible and that the National Gallery will join the hundreds of museums, galleries, libraries and public spaces that will be offering free Wi-Fi as part of our transformation of the UK's digital landscape."
I'm extremely pleased, and very heartened, to see the National Gallery and the government working together and embracing new technologies like this. Three cheers for both from AHN. I don't know who was leading this in either the NG or the DCMS, but give yourselves giant pats on the back if you were involved. In one leap, the National has gone from seriously lagging behind the world's major galleries on the question of digital engagement, to leading them.
When I read the press release above, I find it harder and harder to understand some of the reaction against letting people take photos in the gallery. Photography is now just one part of a much wider and richer visitor experience in galleries; National Gallery visitors can now be more informed than ever about some of the best pictures in the world. What's not to like?
The next step for the National is to add to their online cataloguing. Some of the information available is quite limited, especially when compared to that available at places like the Getty and the Met. While I'm at it, you could say the same about their wall labels too.
Update - Neil Jeffares tweets:
Next step: the excellent complete catalogues should be online. But I fear wall labels will shrink as the "app" takes over.
Update II - our debates have made it into the Evening Standard - well done everyone, and thanks for your contributions!
Update III - we're also in the Telegraph.
Update IV - and The Times!
Update V - there's a poll at the Telegraph, currently running at 57/42 in favour of photography.
Update VI - a Telegraph commenter comments:
Good grief! Yet another clueless establishment, bowing down to their pointless, overpaid, clueless advisors, allowing idiot, brainless, lowest common denominator sheeple to get what they want! God help us! Don't you get it?! Why don't you actually deny the sheeple what they want, and you'll actually be MORE POPULAR!
I wonder if this person wears red trousers.
Update VII - a reader hits many nails on the head:
It is hugely encouraging that the NG have finally decided to allow photography on smartphones etc and to let visitors access wifi within the gallery.
In a public gallery I want to be able to look at and consume the art as I wish - it is infuriating to be dictated to. I don't live in London either so it's not as if I can pop into the National Gallery to peruse the pictures any time I want - a trip to the NG is a bit of a treat and yes I would like to take photographs that I can look at again and share on twitter and Facebook with my friends and family (most of whom have never set foot inside the NG but I would still like to share the art with them).
The access to wifi and the idea that perhaps there could be NG apps for different rooms and exhibitions I find even more exciting. I hate audio guides with a passion, I much prefer a written guide or really good labelling (neither of which are as available as they should be at the NG imo). So having the opportunity to look up a picture or room on my iPhone or iPad as I went round the gallery - being able to dig deeper and find out as much as I could about any work of art while I was actually able to look at it in the flesh - that would be fantastic.
I really don't understand why some people seem so unhappy about this small step to make great art more accessible, understood and appreciated. Sounds like elitism to me!
Update VIII - I was on BBC radio's PM programme talking about all this, from about 45 mins here.
