Museums (and Art) are the Instagram of Yore

I seriously love a good museum — I’ve probably been to 200+ museums around the world so far.

Why?

Museums are all about visual storytelling.

Before we had Instagram and Facebook and media scrolling on devices in our hands, we had to go to a building to see images, to see what other people were creating now and had created in the past.

There’s something particularly wonderful about encountering imagery and objects in-person instead of digitally, and I’ll never stop seeking out the analog version.

Fashion exhibit, Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin; Poster from Chinese graphic design exhibit, Kunstbibliothek, Berlin.

Note: The images in this post are photos I’ve taken over the past 6 weeks: a selection of buildings, art & museums, shown in chronological order of my visits.

Section of the Berlin Wall, East Side Gallery, Berlin; Reichstag Building, Berlin.

Mao, Warhol, Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, Berlin; Exhibition space, Hamburger Bahnhof Museum (former train station), Berlin.

Museums are institutions of learning that foster both creative and critical thinking by presenting us with objects and opinions.

When you’re in a gallery, museum, or exhibition, or looking at any art form or visual object (online or in person), ask questions:

• why is this here?
• why did someone think it was important?
• what assumptions are being made by the museum/curator?
• what is my reaction to it & why?

US combat image art, Christine Streuli, Berlinishe Galerie, Berlin; Sculpture in 20th century gallery, Berlinishe Galerie, Berlin.

You don’t have to love everything you see or want it in your home — just as not everything that you see online, that you read, find interesting, or “like” is something you’re necessarily committing to looking at forever.

Pleasure & personal preference are not the only requirements for something to be considered art — or something of value.

American propaganda posters, German History Museum, Berlin; Map of the German Democratic Republic, DDR Museum, Berlin.

Theoretically, like modern social media apps, museums exist to help us learn about other people, to get a window into someone else’s experience.

Art — be it a famous old sculpture on a pedestal, a painting in an ornate gold frame, or a selfie in your feed — is part of a visual conversation.

Imagine the conversation, and ask:

• what is it saying to other art?
• what is it saying to its time in history?
  (politics, religion, war, disease, entertainment, philosophy, weather, etc)
• what is it saying to you?
• what are you saying in response?

Street art, Boulevard du Temple, Paris; Street artist at work, outside the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Apartment building entry mosaic, Paris.

Water lilies, Monet, l’Orangerie, Paris; Clock, Musée d’Orsay, Paris; Olympia, Manet, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

When we see something, we feel something or understand something that otherwise would just be an abstract idea: the Greek gods, Jesus, the bubonic plague, time, modern life, abstraction itself, Wall Street…

While social media has its merits and being able to see images you like by people around the world, don’t shy away from going into these physical institutions to look through what is essentially a selection of someone else’s feed: the profiles and images and objects that the curator has gathered together to share a certain story.

And continue the conversation.

Katherine works remotely while she travels the world — on the road since June 2014. If you liked this piece, please give it a ❤ Thank you!

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