The world population is exploding, which means our museums and cultural institutions are beginning to see the impact of unprecedented crowds. Museums around the world have been releasing their annual visitation numbers recently, and while it is encouraging to see so many people interested in museums, it has become apparent that museums need new strategies to protect the art and our front of house staff. As museum professionals, we cannot sustain this level of visitation without better support. In this article, I will outline some experiences that I have encountered as a visitor and as a staff member working front of house of a popular exhibition, and how I think we might better improve the way we handle this increase in visitors.
The Louvre
Recently the Museé du Louvre announced its busiest year yet. In 2018, the Louvre welcomed 10.2 million visitors. This sudden influx can be attributed to the highly successful Delacroix exhibition, the Beyonce Apesh*t video, and the ever-popular Mona Lisa. But with this success, averaging approximately 30,000 visitors a day takes a toll on the museum, the art, and its front of house staff. The latter recently made headlines for forcing museum staff to close the exhibit for a day or two until non-front of house staff met with them about crowding and overworking conditions. These front of house staff have recently been confronted with an even more challenging situation, the recent move of the Mona Lisa, but I will touch on that later.
I was lucky enough to visit the Louvre last June, right after the Beyonce video premiered. The Louvre was one of those museums I had romanticized as the ideal museum, but after my last visit, I am not eager to return. With this recent experience in mind, I was also not at all shocked when the news was announced that the front of house staff forced the shutdown. Though the Louvre’s footprint is enormous, it does not handle the crowds well. Between the bottlenecks at security, and overcrowding in the galleries, my experience was pretty miserable.
Usually, when you imagine an art museum, I’m sure you picture a nice peaceful air-conditioned refuge from the world around you. Whether it was the number of visitors or the fact that it is an old palace, I noticed that it was much warmer and humid in the museum than I would have thought safe for the artworks. In all of my training and museum courses, we are taught about the ideal temperature and humidity for artworks. This was very concerning to me. Countless numbers of visitors were fanning themselves with their maps, trying to find water fountains and hovering for places to find seats. Just because the Louvre is a popular museum does not mean they should not try to provide a more comfortable experience for their visitors.
I did not get to interact with the front of house staff too much due to my poor French speaking abilities. Those I did interact with seemed exhausted and overworked. The security guards, tasked with protecting France’s treasures, looked overwhelmed at the number of visitors in line at any given time. And I hate to say it, but on at least one occasion I found a security guard taking a mini-nap in a gallery. I do not fault them, for I understand the stresses of twelve-hour shifts standing on your feet, but when does the museum step in and say that their front of house staff deserves better?
There were very few places in the museum where you were not constantly bumping into other visitors. I sought refuge in the Northern Renaissance galleries. But when I emerged to check out Victory of Samothrace, the historic Grande Gallerie, or the Mona Lisa, in particular, you could not escape the throngs of people. The most discouraging thing for me was that most of these groups of people seemed to walk up to an artwork, take a picture and walk away. Though I do not want to discourage photo taking in museums, it was frustrating having people shoving in front of you to take pictures when you wanted to stand and take in an artwork.
I was desperate to see Liberty Leading the People again but since it had been moved for the Delacroix exhibition we had to push through crowds of people also trying to see it in its significantly smaller gallery. I was always taught that fine art like you find in the Louvre was best experienced in person. But after that trip, I started thinking that it may be a more personal and enjoyable experience to look at it on a large-format screen at home.
Crowd around The Coronation of Napoleon.
Solutions
The Louvre is not the only place where I have experienced this overcrowding first hand. As both a visitor and front of house employee I have experience overcrowding in museums of a variety of sizes. The largest and most traditionally popular museums tend to have the largest crowding problems. There is no one size fits all solution for overcrowding, but from my personal experience, there are four things I would suggest trying: timed or limited entry, avoiding bottlenecks and dead ends in the design, dedicated staff for visitor services (not just security) and ample seating and visitor amenities.
The Notre Dame Cathedral (June 2018). Similar to the Louvre, Notre Dame had an average daily visitation in the tens of thousands.
Timed or Limited Entry
Timed entry, when it works, can be an amazing tool for controlling the flow of visitors in and out of a museum or exhibition. In a museum with timed entry, visitors can choose their time slot on a first come first serve basis when they arrive at the museum for the day. Exhibitions like the U-505 display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago use this tactic exceptionally well. Even though I am sure they would love to have all of their daily visitors tour the U-505 there is not enough space to accommodate them all. I have also seen this work exceptionally well for temporary exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Especially for such popular artists such as Van Gogh or Picasso, the timed and limited entry allowed visitors ample space and time to view everything as much or as little as they want.
The most amazing experience I had with timed entry was at Glenstone in Potomac Maryland. One of Glenstone’s many unique features is the fact that they only let forty visitors every hour. The tickets are free but must be reserved in advance, which can be a challenge. However, if you can get tickets the experience in the museum is unlike any other museum I have ever visited. Because of the extremely limited number of people on the property at any given time, the visit feels like a private one. There is never any visitors blocking your viewing of the art, nor anyone pushing or shoving to get in front of you.
Limited entry does have some negative connotations associated with it. With a push to make museums more welcoming and diverse, limited entry is seen as a decision to make the museum more elitist. I am not arguing that limited entry does not have the potential to be problematic, but I would like to see museums discussing limited entry as a possibility for exhibitions that are dangerously overcrowded. Visitors comfort and enjoyment, as well as the protection of the objects, has to be of the utmost importance to museums.
Timed entry can be difficult to control from the operations end as well. While working at the Hirshhorn for the Infinity Mirrors exhibition, we encountered every problem you could think of with timed tickets. Often our online distribution site crashed on the day of distribution (many thought bots were taking the tickets but to the best of my knowledge that was not true). Another problem was that the museum kept adjusting the amount of online versus walkup tickets available without really seeing any difference in the flow of visitors. The biggest challenge with timed tickets was making sure everyone got in on time. Often museums do not account for the linger time. Once visitors were in that exhibition, they did not want to leave, and as we let more and more visitors in for their time slot, instead of keeping a consistent rate of visitation, the gallery would just get more crowded.
Lines at the Hirshhorn. From https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/arts/design/kusama-exhibit-dc.amp.html.
Avoid Bottlenecks and Dead Ends
Avoiding bottlenecks and dead ends in design sounds like a simple problem to solve, but depending on the design of the building it can be difficult. Simply, when possible, do not put your most popular things in dead ends. Why the Louvre moved the Mona Lisa to the Medici Gallerie baffles me. They decided to put their most popular object in a gallery that appears to be a dead end. This just compounds the crowding because everyone wanting to get in, or out, are stuck in the same small space. This creates a physically and mentally uncomfortable experience.
The most frustrating bottleneck I have ever encountered was the security line to enter the Louvre from the underground mall. There is limited space there, and you cannot expand the physical space itself, but there was an enormously long line just to be shuffled through a tiny space only wide enough for two metal detectors. Had the space been wider and allowed for more security staff, I’m sure that line would have not existed, or at the very least have moved faster. Specifically for the galleries, if you do have to have bottlenecks do not put artwork there. Especially if this is a place where a line may end up forming, bottlenecks tend to be where visitors will lean up against a wall to wait for their group to catch up.
Dedicated Staff for Crowd Control - Not Just Security
Security staff is great for crowd control, but there is another team in a museum who could help with the crowding problems; visitor services. This team, working with security, can dedicate more time to making sure visitors are aware of policies of the museums, tips for visiting as well as helping direct visitors in the right direction. Visitors services should be concerned about the safety of objects, but even more so making sure that visitors have a good experience in the museum. This includes crowd control. This could mean helping visitors who may feel uncomfortable or overwhelmed while waiting in queues, or directing visitors to other parts of the museum until the queue dies down. It is not an easy job, and visitors services often end up bearing the brunt of visitor frustrations, but they are key to maintaining control in the galleries.
When the news hit online that the Louvre’s front of house staff had gone on strike, I could not help but sympathise with them. From my own experiences in comparison to what the Louvre’s staff deal with every day I fully support their demand to have discussions with the rest of the staff of the Louvre. Especially when making decisions about moving major artworks and figuring out crowd control, front of house staff need to be kept in the loop and have a seat at the table. No one will know about visitors movements in a space better than the front of house staff. I feel for the staff that has to deal with the Mona Lisa move, and I hope that they find a system that will work well to handle this major change.
Ample Seating and Visitor Amenities
After my visit to the Louvre I felt much like this other visitor, exhausted and ready for a nap.
Finally, let’s talk about comfort. So your museum is crowded, but you still want visitors to have a good experience. The biggest and most common problem in every museum I have ever visited is that there are not enough places to sit. Yes, they can be obstacles in galleries, and they often take away space for artworks. However, if you have thousands of people who want to see things, give them the tools to stay in the museum and enjoy as much as possible. Visitors need to sit to recover from the very well known phenomenon “museum fatigue.” Despite having paid entry fees to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I have abandoned my visits in the past because I could not find a single spot in the museum to sit down and decompress. Either there were no seats to be found, or they were taken because the museum was so crowded. Museums need quiet spaces for visitors to relax so that they can continue on their visit, or they will leave and possibly with a negative view of the museum because their last thought will be of fatigue and pain.
