Museum Fatigue | Hacker News Reader

Museum Fatigue

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51 pointsthorn12121 comments

There is a room in the British Museum, room 1, which covers the enlightenment period. It is the oldest part of the museum and is laid out in a very old fashioned style with stuff mostly in what looks like (were) bookcases. For some reason I can't tire of it!

Here is the virtual tour of that room (I think): https://artsandculture.google.com/streetview/british-museum/...

Yes, that's it!

My solution when I lived near a museum I liked (the MFA in Boston, USA) was to get a membership and go once every week or two and only spend half an hour to an hour, in one specific room or exhibit.

When I'm visiting, I try to look a museum up ahead of time and then focus on a small but good subsection of stuff. I hit full saturation/fatigue at about two and a half hours.

I bet this is related to Ikea fatigue. I always get a splitting headache around the time we get to the kids' furniture section and it gets worse in the market hall. I perk up when we get to the warehouse tho.

If you are interested in what is being shown at a museum before you arrive, that really helps. The more context you have, the more enjoyable it will be, as you can find things to focus on.

Like Ikea, if you know what you are going to look at as opposed to a "casual stroll through hell before Nordic lunch," you can escape with fewer casualties. I hate going to Ikea as an activity, but running in to look at something or comparing 2 pieces of junk before purchase always finds me with a few not-so-bad extra items.

That is awesome. I always thought this phenomenon was even more accentuated by the fact that, at least in my country, we don't go to the museum very often, so we try to compensate by overstaying to make it worth our while, which turns the experience to a horror show, so we go even less often, yeah.

Also, some museums are particularly designed to be non entertaining or repelling to the human brain I think - when you see variations of the same item over and over (antiquities for instance).

My family has always gone to museums, every trip is punctuated with the best local variety. What I have noticed are the advancements in modern curation, with an eye toward storytelling, greatly improve the context, understanding, and enjoyment of an exhibit. Seasoned museum-goers and subject matter experts may find some attempts overly simplistic, but if you are there for the pieces and have the context, the overall story may not matter as much.

Within contemporary art, there is an art to providing pieces together without telling a story which allows visitors to draw their connections to the pieces. The Louvre is the antithesis of this, as the collections are largely divided into respective dead-guy collections.

I’ve experienced this myself, my solution was to speed run the exhibits. I managed to see “The world’s 100 greatest objects” in about 60 minutes. I read quickly and already have a good knowledge of world culture and history and found the hour to be most enjoyable.

So maybe the fatigue isn't of the mind but of the spirit, people try to connect their hearts to the pieces and not their minds

Interesting from the article: "Camarero & Garrido found in 2018 that visitors who follow a self-regulated path seem to achieve satiation later than those who follow an ordered path" So true for everything, in life?

I think that might work as a tourist, but it seems like going to epcot and learning about the world through its "taste a handful of skittles" approach.

I tried learning to speedreading a long time ago, and found my enjoyment went down the faster I tried to absorb the text.

It seems to me slow down and enjoy it is better.

But I don't know the answer if you have time constraints. Is a bad experience better than no experience?

Wow, this explains a lot, in my case.

I wonder if the fatigue is i dividual-specific. I’m definitely hit after 20-30 min, regardless of my interest in exhibition, whilst my ex could spend hours browsing.

I wonder if this can be connected to a fatigue that I experience during clothes shopping. Whenever I enter some kind of a clothing shop I get super tired after 10-20 minutes of searching for something, while my girlfriend could do that for hours on end. (I hate shopping in general it just makes me tired :( )

I love both museums & shopping, but I also tire of both after about 20-30 minutes.

This is why I have memberships to my local museums, I'll pop in for 20-30 minutes at a time and be content, and not feel like I have to "make use of" an entire entry fee.

Time to move to London, will save yourself a fortune :)

Or Washington, DC. The Smithsonian museums are world-class, and free.

This has changed a lot for me as I’ve grown older. I used to have this really bad but it has faded slowly.

For me its also physical. My legs get more tired waking a few hundred meters in a museum than just walking kilometers outside.

I’m the same. My wife loves museums. It’s been a long 22 years.

I always thought it was because I had a character flaw. Like I’m not cultured enough or too stupid.

This. An ex girlfriend would get really mad at me because I wanted to make frequent breaks in museums. I wish we had known about Museum Fatigue.

I feel like I discovered this independently (and very late), but named it “Museum Leg.”

Perhaps a good antidote could be chair pants! https://tenor.com/view/silicon-valley-gabe-dinesh-wearable-c...

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