Learning to see

Whenever I visit a museum, I must admit that I spend as much time looking at the people as I do looking at the art! It is the art that makes me enter the front door, but, as often as not, it is the people that make me linger a little longer in the galleries. Sometimes, I settle myself down on a chair or a bench to watch and listen.  

As someone who works in a museum, I suppose one could say that this is all part of my professional function. I need to know how people react to our exhibitions, whether they read the labels, pick up a museum map, ask questions of the guards, take time to write in the comment book. I need to know how our audiences respond. But, as noble as this sounds, in fact, I just like to watch what works of art do to people. I like to see what happens between the objects we call art and the individuals who encounter them. 

In an article a few years ago in the New York Times, author and art critic, Michael Kimmelman called for “slow looking.” He suggested that like the growing slow food movement, where the care and attention given to the preparation of food was at least as important as eating for the fuel it provides, perhaps we need a similar practice in art museums – we need to practice slow looking. I think he is right. All the research suggests that museum visitors spend less than a minute looking at any one work and a little more than one minute reading its accompanying label. One minute. Shocking, but not surprising. 

I am convinced that it takes time to see. We can look in an instant, but seeing, actually seeing what is in front of us, how it is made, all its nuances and the details of it materiality, this take time.

I watch people “looking” and, occasionally, I find someone “seeing.” These are among my favorite moments in a museum. Just this week at the Ackland, I noticed a man tucked into a corner, sitting on one of the small campstools we provide, across the gallery from the Thai Buddha head (one of the signature pieces in the Ackland Collection). He had his pad of paper, his backpack on the floor beside him, his pencil in his hand. He was drawing. I have seen him in the galleries before, in the same place, looking at the same object. This time, I decided I would introduce myself and thank him for taking the time to see.  

As I approached him, I could see his drawings in the sketchpad. Not one perfected likeness of the Buddha, but a series of attempts, all very fine, lined up in rows on his paper. Like the multiple images of the Buddha one might find in a temple, his buddhas were a series of encounters – one after another. To my eye, they were beautiful. Why? Because he was seeing the Buddha in front of him and carefully attending to the elongated earlobes, the slight upturn of his lips, the cast of his eyes….over and over again. 

Drawing in the galleries is not the only way to see an object, but it is not a bad tactic to make ourselves aware of how little we notice in the one minute look. Next time you are in a museum, take out a small pad of paper and a pencil and doodle a picture of the picture in front of you. If you cannot draw a lick, then make a short list of all the things you notice. If you want to make this really challenging, stand in front of the work for a few minutes – okay, maybe three minutes to start – and then turn around with your back to the object, and try to record on your little pad of paper all the things you can remember seeing. Take your time to list everything you noticed. Then turn around and look again. Retrace your looking with the aid of your list or the encouragement of your little drawing. What did you miss? What did you forget? What do you notice now?

I think you might be surprised by what you see the second time you look. Details and proportions, colors and lines went unnoticed in the first look. Look again and if you have time, repeat the exercise. Why not?  Chances are good you have a few more minutes. You can – and I think you should – give yourself the time to do more than look.  Let yourself, or rather, train yourself to see.   

Those are my thoughts about looking and seeing. . . what do you see when you practice “slow looking?”