Imagine: You’re sitting on a bench at a museum, quietly observing a painting. Suddenly, a group of people stroll by and snap pictures of the artwork on their iPhones. They share their photos on Instagram; they scan the QR code on the wall next to the piece; they linger and chat. You’re annoyed by it all, until the next horde of patrons do the same. Is this what museum-going now entails? In The Nation, Francesca Billington talks with Claire Bishop, an art historian and the author of Disordered Attention, about the new ways people interact with art. Doing so with a smartphone in hand is not all bad, says Bishop. In fact, it’s a return to “a premodern form of sociability,” and a more realistic approach to engaging with art. Not sure if you agree? Read their conversation to decide.
When you look at pictures of 18th-century museums and theaters—these are drawings and engravings, obviously—you’re struck by the busy crowd talking to each other and largely oblivious to what’s onstage or on the walls. So the kind of socialized attention that we have today in the gallery or museum—taking photos, video clips, texting, and so on—could be seen as a return to premodern sociable spectatorship. Rather than categorizing people’s use of phones in performances as “distraction,” and thus a problem, I see camera phones as a technology that returns us to a premodern form of sociability.
Yes, for sure, people taking photos is annoying. I remember going to the Uffizi 20 years ago, and tourists were walking around like zombies taking video footage of the entire experience, not pausing to look at the work. I’m in favor of tolerating hybrid spectatorship, where you look at the work and maybe take a photo as well. Obviously, going too far in either direction is also not great: If you’re only experiencing something through mediation, why are you there? And the “slow looking” movement comes across as pretty conservative—it’s excessively reverential and technophobic. I want to make a case for both being possible, for being with your phone as a way of close looking.
