think that your heartfelt reaction is quite common, and I am at a bit of a
loss to think how to respond.  Is there something specifically exhausting
about museums on the scale of the Louvre or the Met in NYC, not "recognizing
the human dimension" as you describe?

I personally don't think so at all, but I do recognize the pervasiveness of
this reaction, particularly among visitors to Paris or New York who have
limited amounts of time that they can spend at these museums.

And even among museums with less of a claim to comprehensiveness, such as
the National Galleries in London and Washington, the Uffizi, and other vast
museums with a narrower focus, there is the same problem of sheer exhaustion
and intimidation.

If I were to guess why you ended up hating the Louvre, it would be something
like:  "there is too much here for me to absorb, it is not scaled in a way
that I can get my brain around it.  I feel inferior (I should feel exalted,
but I don't), and my feet are killing me. There are too many people, and too
little sense of discrimination among the visitors and among the people who
choose what to display and how."

The only answer I can think of is that a visit to these museums (or for that
matter any museum) needs to be governed only by your own capacity.  It is
much better to spend an hour at the Louvre, have a good cup of coffee, and
then leave feeling joyous, than to schlep through out of a sense of duty and
leave feeling hateful.  I know this is hard to stick when you have a limited
amount of time to visit, but it is all the more important when you are a
tourist.

I've found that advance planning helps in this regard:  know what you want
to see, and get there first, when you are fresher.  Then go have a cup of
coffee and a croissant, watch the people who are visiting for an hour or so,
and then wander aimlessly, exerting absolutely no willpower or energy, and
allow yourself to drift by whatever catches your eye.  In this wandering I
have had some of my most joyous and serendipitous museum experiences.

I feel really sorry when I hear that someone leaves a museum hating it.  Try
not pushing yourself so hard next time.

Eric Siegel
Director, Planning &
Program Development
The New York Hall of Science
http://www.nyhallsci.org

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Emanuel Andrade C. Sancho [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Thursday, October 01, 1998 11:27 PM
> Subject: THE LOUVRE
>
>
> A few days ago I've visited The Louvre for the first time in my
> life. After 6
> hours of visit
> and only about 20% of the whole museum seen, I was fisicaly and
> psicologicaly
> exausted.
> No question about the fantastic building or the magnific collections.
> Individually, they are of
> exceptional cultural valeue.  Simply I think that in our times
> the idea of a
> "total museum",
> like a global knowledge, doesn't make sense. The human dimension is not
> respected in such place.
>
> I left hating this place.
>
> Comments would be appreciated
>
> Emanuel
>