Why do people go to art museums? Read this article and you will find out that you are not much different than everyone else.
This letter was one of the favorites of the editors and after reading it, I agree. If only because I agree with one of the writers conclusions. Twice now my wife and I went to a beautiful garden and on a walk through a wood in spring. Both times my wife, with a new camera in hand, took many many pictures. Each time thinking about the experience afterward she made mention that sometime we would have to return and she would omit the camera so she could enjoy the scenery more fully. I believe that is what the commenter says in his letter.
EDITORS' SELECTIONS (what's this?)
If anything, the fact that any well-known artwork or other famous sight can be instantly viewed on-line in high quality at one's leisure should be all the more reason to dawdle in front of the real thing, taking in all the details, from different angles, while moving, in a way that's possible only by being physically there. Yet I doubt most people see it that way.
While I do frequent art museums (never taking a camera), I am also a fan of another less exalted but similar type of exhibition, air shows. In the past I would snap photos of every aircraft on display, and I would have recorded every flight demonstration if I had had a movie camera. Yet these days I hardly care to even take a camera to an air show, knowing that if there's anything I want to see at a later time, a quick search on Google or Flickr will reveal dozens of photos of everything there was to see. And I can better enjoy with my bare, moving eyes, ears, and nose (jet exhaust!), all the details and transient sensations that are lost on all the shutterbugs whose entire experience is filtered through a two-inch viewfinder.
While I do frequent art museums (never taking a camera), I am also a fan of another less exalted but similar type of exhibition, air shows. In the past I would snap photos of every aircraft on display, and I would have recorded every flight demonstration if I had had a movie camera. Yet these days I hardly care to even take a camera to an air show, knowing that if there's anything I want to see at a later time, a quick search on Google or Flickr will reveal dozens of photos of everything there was to see. And I can better enjoy with my bare, moving eyes, ears, and nose (jet exhaust!), all the details and transient sensations that are lost on all the shutterbugs whose entire experience is filtered through a two-inch viewfinder.
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