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Museum Consulting - The 7 Saintly Virtues of Museum Curatorship
1. Allow Photography
Museums hold the worldly treasures of humanity. Our heritage should be therefore available for study, reference, and learning by those same people. Prohibiting photography prevents me from later study or reflection. I cannot enlarging portions of the artefact and comparing it with other images I have online, or at home. Having a photographic record of my time encourages others to visit since I’ll be showing off the photographs to other people at any opportunity. This can include the highly influential on-line demographic. In the days before photography, curators would travel the world to draw and study artefacts in other museums to learn more. We now have the technology to make this same level of study a real possibility for those less fortunate.
There are three main reasons, that I can see, of why photography is banned. The first is legitimate – damage. Flash photography will dull most coloured pigment and glazes, and lessen the impact of the piece for future generations. So, by all means ban flash photography (with the harshest of penalties) and let the rest of us enjoy the exhibits.
The second is that photography annoys other patrons. Generally this is untrue. Flash photography certainly annoys others, but otherwise a quiet considerate photographer is no trouble. And if they’re not quiet or considerate to other patrons then they should be expelled from the hall like any one else acting the same way; photographer or no. In the case of very popular exhibits there’s no reason why a specially designated “photographers viewpoint” area couldn’t be assigned. At worst, it’ll remove large queues of tourists from the main exhibit that just want to have their picture taken with the exhibit.
Finally, and this I believe is the often real reason, is that by permitting photography from its halls, the museum can no longer charge 50p for a highly mediocre-looking postcard from the gift shop. Such blatant commercialisation is the cheapest way imaginable to sell out mankind’s heritage.