There’s No Right Way to Visit a Museum: Creating a New Summer Experience at the Guggenheim
This article originally appeared on guggenheim.org/blogs.
An art museum is a place where people can have all kinds of experiences. They can contemplate, learn, and go home inspired by a favorite artist — or one they had never heard of before. They can socialize and relax, and go home thinking about a conversation they had in the galleries. They can come for an intellectual experience, an aesthetic one, an entertaining one, or for any number of other motivations.
This summer, we’re offering Guggenheim visitors a new option — Gallery Encounters — that we hope will contribute to that kind of individually determined experience. It’s a fun, out-of-the-ordinary offering to help people make connections between each other and the art on view.
The roots of this program go back to last year when the museum began to stay open late on Tuesday nights in the summer. During those Summer Tuesdays, we offered talks, music, and specialty cocktails (among other things), and it all went so well that we decided to do it again this year.
As we embarked on planning for the 2018 iteration of Summer Tuesdays, I started thinking about what we could do to build on what we did in 2017. I knew we would have the basics covered: food, drink, and, of course, art. There were already plans under way for music and structured programs to return. But what about adding something else to the menu of options?
As Manager of Public Engagement, one of the things I think about is what we can offer our visitors that will be free with their admission tickets. While some things that fall under that umbrella are established and ongoing, there is still plenty of room to come up with new ideas.
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m always trying to offer visitors an unexpected experience during their time in the museum. I like delight and surprise (who doesn’t?), and I heartily believe that an art museum is ripe to provide both of those things. Many who choose to visit during Summer Tuesdays are coming after work to see some art in a casual way, to have a drink and a chat with friends or a mid-week date. Keeping that in mind, Summer Tuesdays seemed like the perfect time to create some unexpected enjoyment and give visitors a chance to try something new.
I set out a few goals for the kind of experiences I wanted to create: Something with a “light touch” that doesn’t require too much of anyone’s time; that has an element of surprise and wonder; that uses the art as a jumping-off point, but doesn’t require that the art remains the primary focus. I wanted to put the emphasis on the experience of being in the museum — how the space echoes, how it feels to walk up and down our spiraling ramps, what it’s like to be in the museum surrounded by a casually social weeknight evening mood — and see if that might add something to a visitor’s time at the Guggenheim.
My Public Engagement colleague, Blake Myers, and I did some brainstorming, and each of us created an experience we could facilitate using limited materials. We tested our ideas on a half-dozen Education department colleagues who gave us feedback and helped us craft our plans. Then we made adjustments, ordered our materials, and came up with a name for this new type of offering: Gallery Encounters.
Now we’re putting them into practice on select Tuesday evenings throughout the summer. I won’t give too much away, because after all, they’re intended to take you by surprise, at least a little bit. What I can say is that on any given night, you might experience one of two different Gallery Encounters that have been built out of Blake’s and my interests. Blake is a sculptor. I like mysterious, chance interactions. I’ll give you those two clues as to what you might come across if you’re in the museum on a Tuesday evening.
Whether or not you make it here for a Gallery Encounter, I’m happy to share this glimpse into something we’re working on here at the Guggenheim. I know museums can sometimes seem intimidating, especially for anyone coming in without knowing very much about the art on view. It can seem as though there is one “best” way to visit a museum or one “right” way to behave. I’m hoping that offerings like the Gallery Encounters will help shift that perception — and bring you some moments of discovery and joy along the way.
