Digital technologies have revolutionized contemporary society and the massification of the internet, smartphones and apps has changed ways of seeing, being and interacting. Thus, social media such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram have become essential tools to mediate the surrounding reality and the relationships we establish with others. Shooting, filming and sharing our daily lives on these platforms with billions of users is now commonplace. This nurtures a constant urge to create and consume new content.

The avid use of smartphones has also massively hit the galleries, with visitors eager to photograph all their daily experiences. For them, the museum is a highly aestheticised space and highly appealing as a result. 

Yes, there have always been tourists wandering around the galleries, with cameras. But smartphones with cameras filling the museum rooms is the beginning of a new moment in the history of these institutions. It hasn’t been peaceful and is the result of a forced adaptation to the present day.

If we go back a decade, most of the world’s museums vehemently prohibited visitors from taking photos of the artworks on display. Any movement with the camera led to a quick intervention by the nearest room assistant. Alisa Martin, then an employee at the Brooklyn Museum, said in a 2013 interview that «no-photo policies can be difficult to enforce […] as the devices get smaller, it gets harder to manage» (Miranda, 2013). 

Banning photos has become increasingly difficult. One example is artist James Turrell’s exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2013. 

In the installation Aten Reign, created specifically for the Frank Lloyd Wright round, and known for its magnetizing light effect, the artist prohibited taking pictures. Still, more than five thousand posts appeared among various social media platforms. This showed the museum’s total helplessness to counter the will of visitors, for whom the act of photographing everyday life and its subsequent sharing is an inextricable part of the initial experience.

Museums were eventually forced to update their internal policies and modify the rules to accommodate the public’s wishes. They met what the public wants, otherwise they would be overtaken in the society of the spectacle. However, for their professionals and researchers, these new scenarios have sparked an intense debate. Among the several reasons to keep the ban, it was said that photography could have detrimental effects on the visitor’s aesthetic experience (Stylianou-Lambert, 2017). 

Given ICOM’s (2007) definition of a museum, and its mission as a space for education, study and enjoyment, this hesitation by the museum community shows concern for the possible impoverishment of the relationship between viewer and work. This could raise questions about the museum’s ability to continue to be the privileged arena for the appreciation of the artistic object, something that is part of its roots. 

Nowadays, any museum visitor has encountered swarms of cameras, raised by visitors in front of a work of art, shooting continuously. Then they quickly move on to the next piece, where the process is repeated. Moreover, as social media users, there are also thousands of posts we see in cultural venues, among them almost mandatory selfies, either of individuals or entire smiling families, posing in front of the main masterpiece of the museum they are visiting. Faced with this collective behaviour, one may legitimately wonder if the fear shown by several museum professionals was valid when we consider that many of the glances we see in galleries, towards works of art, happen through the smartphone screen. 

But the massive use of mobile devices prompts more questions. For example, the decrease in attention span and concentration, a problem that affects all of society. The constant and easy access to multiple contents, available at any time and place, in addition to social media notifications, clickbaits and constant breaking news, have created addictive behaviours. There is a constant need to scroll, ensuring we absorb all the content available (FOMO – fear of missing out). This craving doesn’t switch off upon entering the gallery. It becomes part of the visit and forces us to divide attention between what appears on the smartphone screen and the works of art we are seeing. This challenges our capacity to be alone, isolated and in true communion with our surroundings. 

Studies cited by the TATE group tell us that visitors to art galleries spend roughly an average of 8 seconds looking at a single work of art in isolation. This brings us back to the problem of attention and how it has become a valuable asset in recent years. With the change of some assumptions, the economy also started to operate based on the immaterial, focused on the “attention” of each person, and this became a valuable asset. In 1997, Michael Goldhaber said that many free online services would end up dividing our attention, making it a contested good for several companies to guarantee their financing. 

The term “attention” is defined by the American Psychological Association as «a state in which cognitive resources are focused on certain aspects of the environment rather than on others». The term “attention economies” indicates a reality where attention becomes a “product” that companies want to maintain at all costs to increase profits. Thus, there are constant attempts to attract and monopolise it for as long as possible. This forces companies to be in these new markets and come up with new and creative ways to constantly capture individual users’ attention. «As a result, human attention has become commodified, and harvesting this attention is now an integral part of the revenue generation strategy implemented in numerous business models. Essentially, the attention economy is fed by a vicious cycle in which we are the product of the attention economy yet also the customer who is unknowingly manipulated into reinforcing it» (Joy, 2021). 

Indeed, entering an exhibition in a large museum, with several galleries and many works different from each other, can be difficult for a visitor without knowledge of art history and interpretation techniques. Additionally, the visit used to be associated with a quasi-ritual, fraught with rules and specific steps, to which not everyone had the key. 

Today, in crowded museums, with buzzing corridors, ringing smartphones and glowing screens, the quiet ritual of contemplation is slowly disappearing. In its place arises a landscape with different rules, in line with the present time.

If digital ubiquity has changed the way we visit museums and relate to works of art, those in charge of these venues try to find creative ways to capture attention. They often use social media as educational tools and as part of the experience. Today, visitors are often encouraged to share their photos from their visits to bond and meet what excites them. It is a strategy to ensure not only their visit but their attention to the artistic and curatorial discourse.

This is a current and relevant issue for the museological reality. It is important to study it in-depth, not only to better understand audiences but also to ensure that museums work with the right tools to tackle these new issues.

Bibliography

ICOM. (2007). Museum Definition. Available in: https://icom.museum/en/resources/standards-guidelines/museum-definition/ (visited on: March 22, 2022). 

Joy, Asher. (2021). «The Attention Economy: Where the Customer Becomes the Product». Business Today, 18 Fevereiro. Available in: https://journal.businesstoday.org/bt-online/2021/the-attention-economy-asher-joy (visited on: March 22, 2022). 

Mintzer, Ally. (2020). «Paying Attention: The Attention Economy». Berkeley Economic Review, 31 Março. Available in: https://econreview.berkeley.edu/paying-attention-the-attention-economy/ (visited on: March 23, 2022). 

Miranda, Carolina A. (2013). «Why Can’t We Take Pictures in Art Museums?». ARTnews, 13 Maio. Available in: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/photography-in-art-museums-2222/ (visited on: March 22, 2022). 

Stylianou-Lambert, Theopisti. (2017). «Photographing in the art museum: Visitor attitudes and motivations». Visitor Studies, 20(2): 114-137. Available in: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321896100_Photographing_in_the_Art_Museum_Visitor_Attitudes_and_Motivations (visited on: March 23, 2022). 

Tate. (s.d.). «A guide to slow looking». Available in: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/guide-slow-looking (visited on: March 23, 2022). 

TEDx Talks. (2016). Art in the Age of Instagram | Jia Jia Fei. Available in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DLNFDQt8Pc&t=152s&ab_channel=TEDxTalks (visited on: March 28, 2022).