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The Children’s Museum

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Beuys-Kiefer

Kids love dinosaurs and mummies. Beuys and Kiefer, not so much? The Broad may be rewriting that rule. Yesterday, the downtown museum was packed with parents, children, and infants in strollers. The youngest visitors seemed to be having as good a time as anyone, and not just with a balloon dog and bunny.

Yet art museums have a fraught relation with children. Don’t take it from me. Check Yelp!, Google, or TripAdvisor.

“RUDE RUDE RUDE / My kid wasn’t running around or touching anything and just because she kept walking fast to each art work I was told that my child needed to stop horsing around.”

“From the moment you step on their pavement the guards are attacking you and your kids. They literally stalk you around the museum.”

“When I purchased the tickets the person who sold them to us told my niece to stop leaning on the wall. She was not, I might add, touching or leaning on the wall.”

These are TripAdvisor reviews of the Norton Simon Museum, but it could be any museum. Mamas turn grizzly mamas when someone else scolds their child. Mamas, papas, and moppas take their revenge in the family way (passive-aggressive) by writing a bad online review.

Hirst dot painting

The Broad claims a new approach to museum security. Visitor Service Associates—VSAs—dress in black, not uniforms but black clothes of their own choosing. VSAs are a cross between a concierge and an Apple Genius. They can explain who Julie Mehretu is, suggest a downtown restaurant. Think Uber driver, not taxi driver.

In an interview with KPCC, Lauren Girard, the Broad’s Associate Director of Visitor Services, cited the “authority of the resource,” a technique used by National Park rangers. Unlike a museum guard, a park ranger must persuade the visitor to do the right thing when no one is watching. “Only you can prevent forest fires.”

Girard explained,

“Without making a value judgment, without saying you’re not allowed to do something, you just acknowledge what the person is doing: I noticed that you wanted to take a photo with the flash on—what you may not realize is that the flash can actually damage pigments in a photograph.”

Ruscha

I witnessed this approach several times in one visit to a crowded museum. In the most notable, a grown-up enthusiast waved her hand inches away from Ellsworth Kelly‘s Green Blue Red, as if drawing psychic energy from it. The VSA intervened to request that she stand back a bit, adding that the visitor’s clothes matched Kelly’s red and blue. It was the perfect thing to say. Not a canned line; more like a stand-up comedian responding to a heckler, only a lot nicer.

Cy Twombly room

Whatever you call them, museum guards have a tough job. They’re the cop on the beat, making sure the art is there for rambunctious generations yet unborn. At best they’ve got a split-second to gauge a visitor’s intent. The Broad’s men and women in black engage visitors in conversation, positioning themselves as helpful friends rather than silent authority figures. One explained a Keith Haring painting to me (not that I was then, or ever, especially puzzled about a Haring painting). Elsewhere I saw a VSA take a photograph for a couple; offer the advice that you can’t touch the art but it’s okay to frame the shot like you’re touching the art.

Such trade-offs won’t be new to any parent. Are moms and dads hipster-friends or tit-for-tat negotiators? The correct answer must be an optimum somewhere between the extremes. It will be interesting to see how the Broad experiment plays out.

Damien Hirst sheep


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