Tourist selfies threaten artwork in Europe's museums

Straits Times

3 days ago

Europe's museums are struggling to cope with the problematic side of their large-scale appeal and protect their collections from summer visitors. ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI
LONDON – It is another summer of European selfie snafus.
On June 21, a visitor to the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Italy, stepped backwards into a painting while trying to pose like its subject, Ferdinando de' Medici, a 17th-century grand prince and patron of the arts.
For the Uffizi's director, that was the last straw, and he is not alone in his frustration.
This spring, in the Palazzo Maffei in Verona, Italy, a visitor broke a chair covered in Swarovski crystals. This, too, was the result of a snapshot gone wrong: A man apparently waited for the guards to leave before posing, in an ill-fated attempt at squatting.
And in June, the staff at the Louvre Museum in Paris went on an unauthorised strike to protest, in part, overcrowding and the headaches caused by selfie-taking tourists.
'The problem of visitors who come to museums to make memes or take selfies for social media is rampant,' the Uffizi's director Simone Verde said in a statement.
Europe's museums are struggling to cope with the problematic side of their large-scale appeal and protect their collections from summer visitors, who flock to their galleries to make social media content and cool down in rare continental air-conditioning, whether or not they gain a deeper knowledge of art and culture.
The recent episodes, at the start of the high tourist season, have called attention to a long-standing problem: Too many tourists toting too many phones. Museums have not been able to find a foolproof compromise, despite their best efforts.
'This problem, with tourists damaging artwork, is something that is increasingly happening,' said Professor Marina Novelli, director of the Sustainable Travel and Tourism Advanced Research Center at Nottingham University in England.
Previously, she said, tourists might have had paintings that they wanted to see in person. Now, they come with a 'selfie bucket list' of paintings or places they want to photograph – or be photographed in front of – essentially creating personalised postcards from the trip.
'It's more about sharing, not necessarily the experience, but the fact that 'I was there,'' she said.
It is not just museums that are straining under the weight of their own appeal. European cities are also trying to find a balance between welcoming visitors and protecting residents in the age of mass tourism.
Museums face competing goals. Part of their mission is to allow the public to see art that for generations was hidden away from view in the homes of aristocrats and other elites. They want visitors and often need ticket revenue to survive. But museums also have a duty to protect their art and preserve it for the future.
Cellphones are a major part of the challenge as tourists crowd, climb and stunt for the camera. The devices can distract parents from their curious children, who have also damaged art in recent months, and turn museums into protest theatres.
Climate demonstrators have targeted pieces with paint, glue or soup to raise awareness about the dangers of unchecked carbon emissions, and then used their phones to document the protests on social media.
'Museums walk a very fine line between accessibility and preservation,' Prof Novelli said. She suggested that institutions should approach the problem with a range of measures, like 'subtle but effective' physical barriers, selfie zones, warning alarms and better signage.
In Verona, museum officials released a video from closed-circuit television cameras showing the sparkling chair as it collapsed under the tourist's weight, hoping to identify those behind the destruction and encourage better behaviour. They also said they planned to protect the chair with plexiglass.
Mr Verde of the Uffizi pledged to 'set very precise limits' and move towards 'preventing' such behaviour. The gallery did not share footage of the episode with The New York Times and declined to specify what limits, if any, it might impose on tourists in the future.
For now, the episode has marred what was supposed to have been a festive month for the Uffizi, which just celebrated the dismantling of an unsightly crane that had loomed over it for nearly two decades.
But the painting is expected to survive. The museum said the work had been 'lightly damaged' and would need to be restored. The Uffizi said the artwork would soon take its place again in an exhibition about the 18th century, which has been temporarily closed . NYTIMES
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