I like art. In fact, I really like art. Liking art is sort of my job. So why, when I’m in an exhibition, do I dash through like I’m on Supermarket Sweep and Dale Winton has just told me to “get a move on”? Inevitably, I’ve hurtled past brilliant works that I’d genuinely love to see, and there’s always some masterpiece I didn’t realise was on display, until I spot it on a postcard in the gift shop. Whoops.
Why am I like this? And why are you probably like this, too?
Whether we find ourselves in a behemoth art fair where the sheer number of artworks is enough to make anyone seasick, or in a small gallery space with just a few paintings on the wall, we all seem to be uncomfortable taking our time.
I read something (okay, okay, I saw a video on Instagram) from a parent of young children, who said that the difference between parents who find the toddler stage unbearable and those who enjoy it is being comfortable with things taking as long as they take. For many of us, allowing a 2-year-old to put on their own shoes - which will take 10 minutes, rather than 10 seconds if you wrestle them into them yourself - would be testing, if not actively anxiety-inducing. What if we have somewhere to be!? The thing is, though, the perky American mother explained, that often, we don’t have anywhere to be. And yet we still rush.
In this laboured metaphor, I am the parent, my brain is the toddler, and looking at art is putting on shoes. Despite basically never going to exhibitions on a tight deadline, I gallop through, looking forward to when “see art” is ticked off my list and I can move on to the next thing. I now try to enter exhibitions with a deep breath and a pact with myself that I will allow this to take as long as my brain needs it to take. Maybe having-received-an-email is not a reason to deny myself the joy of slow looking.
Luckily for us, museums and galleries are doing their bit to help us stay engaged in their spaces for longer. These organisations are well aware of visitors’ limited attention spans. Is it something to do with mobile phones? Being locked away during Covid? All that microplastic nestled in our brains from chewing on Polly Pockets’ clothes as a child? Either way, they’re on the case. They understand that, in a world in which (we all at least feel that) our attention is being pulled left, right, and centre, visuals alone just won’t cut it anymore. Welcome to the dawn of the multi-sensory exhibition.
From immersive installations, selfies from which flood social media after press preview day, like Tate’s recent Do Ho Suh: Walk The House, to the British Library’s Medieval Women: In Their Own Words, which saw thousands of visitors bending down to sniff recreated medieval smells through special doors disguised as abbey windows - museums are upping the sensory ante.
It’s not uncommon now for exhibitions to come with their own accompanying soundtrack, or for museums to include touchable examples for inquisitive viewers. Personally, it still feels illegal to touch anything in a museum, no matter how many signs say that I can. What if the sign itself was art, and I’m promptly shoulder-barged to the ground by a septuagenarian museum volunteer?
And there’s nothing museums like to do more than invite collectors and patrons to dine inside their gallery spaces, which ticks “taste” off the list. The rest of us will have to wait for the introduction of themed lollipops, which I reckon aren’t far around the corner.
The success of these multi-sensory exhibitions is not only evidence that we need organisations to give us more if we’re going to truly engage with what they’re showing us, but also of the rising desire from audiences for immersive, tangible spaces. We’re fed up with our phones, Zoom meetings, and turning off the medium screen once work ends and turning on the bigger screen to “wind down”. We want real spaces and real experiences, and dynamic exhibitions are the perfect way for arts organisations to capitalise on this demand.
On Tuesday, 28 October, gowithYamo is hosting an audio-sensory exhibition tour at Gasworks of their current exhibition Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien: Mémoires des corps, led by curator and educator Melissa Baksh. The tour will pair each of the artworks in the exhibition (which focuses on femininity, legend, and the cosmos) with a set of curated songs to examine how sound can transform our viewing experiences. Baksh is also a DJ, in addition to her work as an art historian, so we can guarantee that the selections will be impeccable.
The aim of the tour is to get us to engage with art with intention and feeling, and to slow down - no matter how long it takes us to put our shoes on.
I like art. In fact, I really like art. Liking art is sort of my job. So why, when I’m in an exhibition, do I dash through like I’m on Supermarket Sweep and Dale Winton has just told me to “get a move on”? Inevitably, I’ve hurtled past brilliant works that I’d genuinely love to see, and there’s always some masterpiece I didn’t realise was on display, until I spot it on a postcard in the gift shop. Whoops.
Why am I like this? And why are you probably like this, too?
Whether we find ourselves in a behemoth art fair where the sheer number of artworks is enough to make anyone seasick, or in a small gallery space with just a few paintings on the wall, we all seem to be uncomfortable taking our time.
I read something (okay, okay, I saw a video on Instagram) from a parent of young children, who said that the difference between parents who find the toddler stage unbearable and those who enjoy it is being comfortable with things taking as long as they take. For many of us, allowing a 2-year-old to put on their own shoes - which will take 10 minutes, rather than 10 seconds if you wrestle them into them yourself - would be testing, if not actively anxiety-inducing. What if we have somewhere to be!? The thing is, though, the perky American mother explained, that often, we don’t have anywhere to be. And yet we still rush.
In this laboured metaphor, I am the parent, my brain is the toddler, and looking at art is putting on shoes. Despite basically never going to exhibitions on a tight deadline, I gallop through, looking forward to when “see art” is ticked off my list and I can move on to the next thing. I now try to enter exhibitions with a deep breath and a pact with myself that I will allow this to take as long as my brain needs it to take. Maybe having-received-an-email is not a reason to deny myself the joy of slow looking.
Luckily for us, museums and galleries are doing their bit to help us stay engaged in their spaces for longer. These organisations are well aware of visitors’ limited attention spans. Is it something to do with mobile phones? Being locked away during Covid? All that microplastic nestled in our brains from chewing on Polly Pockets’ clothes as a child? Either way, they’re on the case. They understand that, in a world in which (we all at least feel that) our attention is being pulled left, right, and centre, visuals alone just won’t cut it anymore. Welcome to the dawn of the multi-sensory exhibition.
From immersive installations, selfies from which flood social media after press preview day, like Tate’s recent Do Ho Suh: Walk The House, to the British Library’s Medieval Women: In Their Own Words, which saw thousands of visitors bending down to sniff recreated medieval smells through special doors disguised as abbey windows - museums are upping the sensory ante.
It’s not uncommon now for exhibitions to come with their own accompanying soundtrack, or for museums to include touchable examples for inquisitive viewers. Personally, it still feels illegal to touch anything in a museum, no matter how many signs say that I can. What if the sign itself was art, and I’m promptly shoulder-barged to the ground by a septuagenarian museum volunteer?
And there’s nothing museums like to do more than invite collectors and patrons to dine inside their gallery spaces, which ticks “taste” off the list. The rest of us will have to wait for the introduction of themed lollipops, which I reckon aren’t far around the corner.
The success of these multi-sensory exhibitions is not only evidence that we need organisations to give us more if we’re going to truly engage with what they’re showing us, but also of the rising desire from audiences for immersive, tangible spaces. We’re fed up with our phones, Zoom meetings, and turning off the medium screen once work ends and turning on the bigger screen to “wind down”. We want real spaces and real experiences, and dynamic exhibitions are the perfect way for arts organisations to capitalise on this demand.
On Tuesday, 28 October, gowithYamo is hosting an audio-sensory exhibition tour at Gasworks of their current exhibition Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien: Mémoires des corps, led by curator and educator Melissa Baksh. The tour will pair each of the artworks in the exhibition (which focuses on femininity, legend, and the cosmos) with a set of curated songs to examine how sound can transform our viewing experiences. Baksh is also a DJ, in addition to her work as an art historian, so we can guarantee that the selections will be impeccable.
The aim of the tour is to get us to engage with art with intention and feeling, and to slow down - no matter how long it takes us to put our shoes on.
I like art. In fact, I really like art. Liking art is sort of my job. So why, when I’m in an exhibition, do I dash through like I’m on Supermarket Sweep and Dale Winton has just told me to “get a move on”? Inevitably, I’ve hurtled past brilliant works that I’d genuinely love to see, and there’s always some masterpiece I didn’t realise was on display, until I spot it on a postcard in the gift shop. Whoops.
Why am I like this? And why are you probably like this, too?
Whether we find ourselves in a behemoth art fair where the sheer number of artworks is enough to make anyone seasick, or in a small gallery space with just a few paintings on the wall, we all seem to be uncomfortable taking our time.
I read something (okay, okay, I saw a video on Instagram) from a parent of young children, who said that the difference between parents who find the toddler stage unbearable and those who enjoy it is being comfortable with things taking as long as they take. For many of us, allowing a 2-year-old to put on their own shoes - which will take 10 minutes, rather than 10 seconds if you wrestle them into them yourself - would be testing, if not actively anxiety-inducing. What if we have somewhere to be!? The thing is, though, the perky American mother explained, that often, we don’t have anywhere to be. And yet we still rush.
In this laboured metaphor, I am the parent, my brain is the toddler, and looking at art is putting on shoes. Despite basically never going to exhibitions on a tight deadline, I gallop through, looking forward to when “see art” is ticked off my list and I can move on to the next thing. I now try to enter exhibitions with a deep breath and a pact with myself that I will allow this to take as long as my brain needs it to take. Maybe having-received-an-email is not a reason to deny myself the joy of slow looking.
Luckily for us, museums and galleries are doing their bit to help us stay engaged in their spaces for longer. These organisations are well aware of visitors’ limited attention spans. Is it something to do with mobile phones? Being locked away during Covid? All that microplastic nestled in our brains from chewing on Polly Pockets’ clothes as a child? Either way, they’re on the case. They understand that, in a world in which (we all at least feel that) our attention is being pulled left, right, and centre, visuals alone just won’t cut it anymore. Welcome to the dawn of the multi-sensory exhibition.
From immersive installations, selfies from which flood social media after press preview day, like Tate’s recent Do Ho Suh: Walk The House, to the British Library’s Medieval Women: In Their Own Words, which saw thousands of visitors bending down to sniff recreated medieval smells through special doors disguised as abbey windows - museums are upping the sensory ante.
It’s not uncommon now for exhibitions to come with their own accompanying soundtrack, or for museums to include touchable examples for inquisitive viewers. Personally, it still feels illegal to touch anything in a museum, no matter how many signs say that I can. What if the sign itself was art, and I’m promptly shoulder-barged to the ground by a septuagenarian museum volunteer?
And there’s nothing museums like to do more than invite collectors and patrons to dine inside their gallery spaces, which ticks “taste” off the list. The rest of us will have to wait for the introduction of themed lollipops, which I reckon aren’t far around the corner.
The success of these multi-sensory exhibitions is not only evidence that we need organisations to give us more if we’re going to truly engage with what they’re showing us, but also of the rising desire from audiences for immersive, tangible spaces. We’re fed up with our phones, Zoom meetings, and turning off the medium screen once work ends and turning on the bigger screen to “wind down”. We want real spaces and real experiences, and dynamic exhibitions are the perfect way for arts organisations to capitalise on this demand.
On Tuesday, 28 October, gowithYamo is hosting an audio-sensory exhibition tour at Gasworks of their current exhibition Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien: Mémoires des corps, led by curator and educator Melissa Baksh. The tour will pair each of the artworks in the exhibition (which focuses on femininity, legend, and the cosmos) with a set of curated songs to examine how sound can transform our viewing experiences. Baksh is also a DJ, in addition to her work as an art historian, so we can guarantee that the selections will be impeccable.
The aim of the tour is to get us to engage with art with intention and feeling, and to slow down - no matter how long it takes us to put our shoes on.
I like art. In fact, I really like art. Liking art is sort of my job. So why, when I’m in an exhibition, do I dash through like I’m on Supermarket Sweep and Dale Winton has just told me to “get a move on”? Inevitably, I’ve hurtled past brilliant works that I’d genuinely love to see, and there’s always some masterpiece I didn’t realise was on display, until I spot it on a postcard in the gift shop. Whoops.
Why am I like this? And why are you probably like this, too?
Whether we find ourselves in a behemoth art fair where the sheer number of artworks is enough to make anyone seasick, or in a small gallery space with just a few paintings on the wall, we all seem to be uncomfortable taking our time.
I read something (okay, okay, I saw a video on Instagram) from a parent of young children, who said that the difference between parents who find the toddler stage unbearable and those who enjoy it is being comfortable with things taking as long as they take. For many of us, allowing a 2-year-old to put on their own shoes - which will take 10 minutes, rather than 10 seconds if you wrestle them into them yourself - would be testing, if not actively anxiety-inducing. What if we have somewhere to be!? The thing is, though, the perky American mother explained, that often, we don’t have anywhere to be. And yet we still rush.
In this laboured metaphor, I am the parent, my brain is the toddler, and looking at art is putting on shoes. Despite basically never going to exhibitions on a tight deadline, I gallop through, looking forward to when “see art” is ticked off my list and I can move on to the next thing. I now try to enter exhibitions with a deep breath and a pact with myself that I will allow this to take as long as my brain needs it to take. Maybe having-received-an-email is not a reason to deny myself the joy of slow looking.
Luckily for us, museums and galleries are doing their bit to help us stay engaged in their spaces for longer. These organisations are well aware of visitors’ limited attention spans. Is it something to do with mobile phones? Being locked away during Covid? All that microplastic nestled in our brains from chewing on Polly Pockets’ clothes as a child? Either way, they’re on the case. They understand that, in a world in which (we all at least feel that) our attention is being pulled left, right, and centre, visuals alone just won’t cut it anymore. Welcome to the dawn of the multi-sensory exhibition.
From immersive installations, selfies from which flood social media after press preview day, like Tate’s recent Do Ho Suh: Walk The House, to the British Library’s Medieval Women: In Their Own Words, which saw thousands of visitors bending down to sniff recreated medieval smells through special doors disguised as abbey windows - museums are upping the sensory ante.
It’s not uncommon now for exhibitions to come with their own accompanying soundtrack, or for museums to include touchable examples for inquisitive viewers. Personally, it still feels illegal to touch anything in a museum, no matter how many signs say that I can. What if the sign itself was art, and I’m promptly shoulder-barged to the ground by a septuagenarian museum volunteer?
And there’s nothing museums like to do more than invite collectors and patrons to dine inside their gallery spaces, which ticks “taste” off the list. The rest of us will have to wait for the introduction of themed lollipops, which I reckon aren’t far around the corner.
The success of these multi-sensory exhibitions is not only evidence that we need organisations to give us more if we’re going to truly engage with what they’re showing us, but also of the rising desire from audiences for immersive, tangible spaces. We’re fed up with our phones, Zoom meetings, and turning off the medium screen once work ends and turning on the bigger screen to “wind down”. We want real spaces and real experiences, and dynamic exhibitions are the perfect way for arts organisations to capitalise on this demand.
On Tuesday, 28 October, gowithYamo is hosting an audio-sensory exhibition tour at Gasworks of their current exhibition Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien: Mémoires des corps, led by curator and educator Melissa Baksh. The tour will pair each of the artworks in the exhibition (which focuses on femininity, legend, and the cosmos) with a set of curated songs to examine how sound can transform our viewing experiences. Baksh is also a DJ, in addition to her work as an art historian, so we can guarantee that the selections will be impeccable.
The aim of the tour is to get us to engage with art with intention and feeling, and to slow down - no matter how long it takes us to put our shoes on.
I like art. In fact, I really like art. Liking art is sort of my job. So why, when I’m in an exhibition, do I dash through like I’m on Supermarket Sweep and Dale Winton has just told me to “get a move on”? Inevitably, I’ve hurtled past brilliant works that I’d genuinely love to see, and there’s always some masterpiece I didn’t realise was on display, until I spot it on a postcard in the gift shop. Whoops.
Why am I like this? And why are you probably like this, too?
Whether we find ourselves in a behemoth art fair where the sheer number of artworks is enough to make anyone seasick, or in a small gallery space with just a few paintings on the wall, we all seem to be uncomfortable taking our time.
I read something (okay, okay, I saw a video on Instagram) from a parent of young children, who said that the difference between parents who find the toddler stage unbearable and those who enjoy it is being comfortable with things taking as long as they take. For many of us, allowing a 2-year-old to put on their own shoes - which will take 10 minutes, rather than 10 seconds if you wrestle them into them yourself - would be testing, if not actively anxiety-inducing. What if we have somewhere to be!? The thing is, though, the perky American mother explained, that often, we don’t have anywhere to be. And yet we still rush.
In this laboured metaphor, I am the parent, my brain is the toddler, and looking at art is putting on shoes. Despite basically never going to exhibitions on a tight deadline, I gallop through, looking forward to when “see art” is ticked off my list and I can move on to the next thing. I now try to enter exhibitions with a deep breath and a pact with myself that I will allow this to take as long as my brain needs it to take. Maybe having-received-an-email is not a reason to deny myself the joy of slow looking.
Luckily for us, museums and galleries are doing their bit to help us stay engaged in their spaces for longer. These organisations are well aware of visitors’ limited attention spans. Is it something to do with mobile phones? Being locked away during Covid? All that microplastic nestled in our brains from chewing on Polly Pockets’ clothes as a child? Either way, they’re on the case. They understand that, in a world in which (we all at least feel that) our attention is being pulled left, right, and centre, visuals alone just won’t cut it anymore. Welcome to the dawn of the multi-sensory exhibition.
From immersive installations, selfies from which flood social media after press preview day, like Tate’s recent Do Ho Suh: Walk The House, to the British Library’s Medieval Women: In Their Own Words, which saw thousands of visitors bending down to sniff recreated medieval smells through special doors disguised as abbey windows - museums are upping the sensory ante.
It’s not uncommon now for exhibitions to come with their own accompanying soundtrack, or for museums to include touchable examples for inquisitive viewers. Personally, it still feels illegal to touch anything in a museum, no matter how many signs say that I can. What if the sign itself was art, and I’m promptly shoulder-barged to the ground by a septuagenarian museum volunteer?
And there’s nothing museums like to do more than invite collectors and patrons to dine inside their gallery spaces, which ticks “taste” off the list. The rest of us will have to wait for the introduction of themed lollipops, which I reckon aren’t far around the corner.
The success of these multi-sensory exhibitions is not only evidence that we need organisations to give us more if we’re going to truly engage with what they’re showing us, but also of the rising desire from audiences for immersive, tangible spaces. We’re fed up with our phones, Zoom meetings, and turning off the medium screen once work ends and turning on the bigger screen to “wind down”. We want real spaces and real experiences, and dynamic exhibitions are the perfect way for arts organisations to capitalise on this demand.
On Tuesday, 28 October, gowithYamo is hosting an audio-sensory exhibition tour at Gasworks of their current exhibition Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien: Mémoires des corps, led by curator and educator Melissa Baksh. The tour will pair each of the artworks in the exhibition (which focuses on femininity, legend, and the cosmos) with a set of curated songs to examine how sound can transform our viewing experiences. Baksh is also a DJ, in addition to her work as an art historian, so we can guarantee that the selections will be impeccable.
The aim of the tour is to get us to engage with art with intention and feeling, and to slow down - no matter how long it takes us to put our shoes on.
I like art. In fact, I really like art. Liking art is sort of my job. So why, when I’m in an exhibition, do I dash through like I’m on Supermarket Sweep and Dale Winton has just told me to “get a move on”? Inevitably, I’ve hurtled past brilliant works that I’d genuinely love to see, and there’s always some masterpiece I didn’t realise was on display, until I spot it on a postcard in the gift shop. Whoops.
Why am I like this? And why are you probably like this, too?
Whether we find ourselves in a behemoth art fair where the sheer number of artworks is enough to make anyone seasick, or in a small gallery space with just a few paintings on the wall, we all seem to be uncomfortable taking our time.
I read something (okay, okay, I saw a video on Instagram) from a parent of young children, who said that the difference between parents who find the toddler stage unbearable and those who enjoy it is being comfortable with things taking as long as they take. For many of us, allowing a 2-year-old to put on their own shoes - which will take 10 minutes, rather than 10 seconds if you wrestle them into them yourself - would be testing, if not actively anxiety-inducing. What if we have somewhere to be!? The thing is, though, the perky American mother explained, that often, we don’t have anywhere to be. And yet we still rush.
In this laboured metaphor, I am the parent, my brain is the toddler, and looking at art is putting on shoes. Despite basically never going to exhibitions on a tight deadline, I gallop through, looking forward to when “see art” is ticked off my list and I can move on to the next thing. I now try to enter exhibitions with a deep breath and a pact with myself that I will allow this to take as long as my brain needs it to take. Maybe having-received-an-email is not a reason to deny myself the joy of slow looking.
Luckily for us, museums and galleries are doing their bit to help us stay engaged in their spaces for longer. These organisations are well aware of visitors’ limited attention spans. Is it something to do with mobile phones? Being locked away during Covid? All that microplastic nestled in our brains from chewing on Polly Pockets’ clothes as a child? Either way, they’re on the case. They understand that, in a world in which (we all at least feel that) our attention is being pulled left, right, and centre, visuals alone just won’t cut it anymore. Welcome to the dawn of the multi-sensory exhibition.
From immersive installations, selfies from which flood social media after press preview day, like Tate’s recent Do Ho Suh: Walk The House, to the British Library’s Medieval Women: In Their Own Words, which saw thousands of visitors bending down to sniff recreated medieval smells through special doors disguised as abbey windows - museums are upping the sensory ante.
It’s not uncommon now for exhibitions to come with their own accompanying soundtrack, or for museums to include touchable examples for inquisitive viewers. Personally, it still feels illegal to touch anything in a museum, no matter how many signs say that I can. What if the sign itself was art, and I’m promptly shoulder-barged to the ground by a septuagenarian museum volunteer?
And there’s nothing museums like to do more than invite collectors and patrons to dine inside their gallery spaces, which ticks “taste” off the list. The rest of us will have to wait for the introduction of themed lollipops, which I reckon aren’t far around the corner.
The success of these multi-sensory exhibitions is not only evidence that we need organisations to give us more if we’re going to truly engage with what they’re showing us, but also of the rising desire from audiences for immersive, tangible spaces. We’re fed up with our phones, Zoom meetings, and turning off the medium screen once work ends and turning on the bigger screen to “wind down”. We want real spaces and real experiences, and dynamic exhibitions are the perfect way for arts organisations to capitalise on this demand.
On Tuesday, 28 October, gowithYamo is hosting an audio-sensory exhibition tour at Gasworks of their current exhibition Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien: Mémoires des corps, led by curator and educator Melissa Baksh. The tour will pair each of the artworks in the exhibition (which focuses on femininity, legend, and the cosmos) with a set of curated songs to examine how sound can transform our viewing experiences. Baksh is also a DJ, in addition to her work as an art historian, so we can guarantee that the selections will be impeccable.
The aim of the tour is to get us to engage with art with intention and feeling, and to slow down - no matter how long it takes us to put our shoes on.
I like art. In fact, I really like art. Liking art is sort of my job. So why, when I’m in an exhibition, do I dash through like I’m on Supermarket Sweep and Dale Winton has just told me to “get a move on”? Inevitably, I’ve hurtled past brilliant works that I’d genuinely love to see, and there’s always some masterpiece I didn’t realise was on display, until I spot it on a postcard in the gift shop. Whoops.
Why am I like this? And why are you probably like this, too?
Whether we find ourselves in a behemoth art fair where the sheer number of artworks is enough to make anyone seasick, or in a small gallery space with just a few paintings on the wall, we all seem to be uncomfortable taking our time.
I read something (okay, okay, I saw a video on Instagram) from a parent of young children, who said that the difference between parents who find the toddler stage unbearable and those who enjoy it is being comfortable with things taking as long as they take. For many of us, allowing a 2-year-old to put on their own shoes - which will take 10 minutes, rather than 10 seconds if you wrestle them into them yourself - would be testing, if not actively anxiety-inducing. What if we have somewhere to be!? The thing is, though, the perky American mother explained, that often, we don’t have anywhere to be. And yet we still rush.
In this laboured metaphor, I am the parent, my brain is the toddler, and looking at art is putting on shoes. Despite basically never going to exhibitions on a tight deadline, I gallop through, looking forward to when “see art” is ticked off my list and I can move on to the next thing. I now try to enter exhibitions with a deep breath and a pact with myself that I will allow this to take as long as my brain needs it to take. Maybe having-received-an-email is not a reason to deny myself the joy of slow looking.
Luckily for us, museums and galleries are doing their bit to help us stay engaged in their spaces for longer. These organisations are well aware of visitors’ limited attention spans. Is it something to do with mobile phones? Being locked away during Covid? All that microplastic nestled in our brains from chewing on Polly Pockets’ clothes as a child? Either way, they’re on the case. They understand that, in a world in which (we all at least feel that) our attention is being pulled left, right, and centre, visuals alone just won’t cut it anymore. Welcome to the dawn of the multi-sensory exhibition.
From immersive installations, selfies from which flood social media after press preview day, like Tate’s recent Do Ho Suh: Walk The House, to the British Library’s Medieval Women: In Their Own Words, which saw thousands of visitors bending down to sniff recreated medieval smells through special doors disguised as abbey windows - museums are upping the sensory ante.
It’s not uncommon now for exhibitions to come with their own accompanying soundtrack, or for museums to include touchable examples for inquisitive viewers. Personally, it still feels illegal to touch anything in a museum, no matter how many signs say that I can. What if the sign itself was art, and I’m promptly shoulder-barged to the ground by a septuagenarian museum volunteer?
And there’s nothing museums like to do more than invite collectors and patrons to dine inside their gallery spaces, which ticks “taste” off the list. The rest of us will have to wait for the introduction of themed lollipops, which I reckon aren’t far around the corner.
The success of these multi-sensory exhibitions is not only evidence that we need organisations to give us more if we’re going to truly engage with what they’re showing us, but also of the rising desire from audiences for immersive, tangible spaces. We’re fed up with our phones, Zoom meetings, and turning off the medium screen once work ends and turning on the bigger screen to “wind down”. We want real spaces and real experiences, and dynamic exhibitions are the perfect way for arts organisations to capitalise on this demand.
On Tuesday, 28 October, gowithYamo is hosting an audio-sensory exhibition tour at Gasworks of their current exhibition Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien: Mémoires des corps, led by curator and educator Melissa Baksh. The tour will pair each of the artworks in the exhibition (which focuses on femininity, legend, and the cosmos) with a set of curated songs to examine how sound can transform our viewing experiences. Baksh is also a DJ, in addition to her work as an art historian, so we can guarantee that the selections will be impeccable.
The aim of the tour is to get us to engage with art with intention and feeling, and to slow down - no matter how long it takes us to put our shoes on.
I like art. In fact, I really like art. Liking art is sort of my job. So why, when I’m in an exhibition, do I dash through like I’m on Supermarket Sweep and Dale Winton has just told me to “get a move on”? Inevitably, I’ve hurtled past brilliant works that I’d genuinely love to see, and there’s always some masterpiece I didn’t realise was on display, until I spot it on a postcard in the gift shop. Whoops.
Why am I like this? And why are you probably like this, too?
Whether we find ourselves in a behemoth art fair where the sheer number of artworks is enough to make anyone seasick, or in a small gallery space with just a few paintings on the wall, we all seem to be uncomfortable taking our time.
I read something (okay, okay, I saw a video on Instagram) from a parent of young children, who said that the difference between parents who find the toddler stage unbearable and those who enjoy it is being comfortable with things taking as long as they take. For many of us, allowing a 2-year-old to put on their own shoes - which will take 10 minutes, rather than 10 seconds if you wrestle them into them yourself - would be testing, if not actively anxiety-inducing. What if we have somewhere to be!? The thing is, though, the perky American mother explained, that often, we don’t have anywhere to be. And yet we still rush.
In this laboured metaphor, I am the parent, my brain is the toddler, and looking at art is putting on shoes. Despite basically never going to exhibitions on a tight deadline, I gallop through, looking forward to when “see art” is ticked off my list and I can move on to the next thing. I now try to enter exhibitions with a deep breath and a pact with myself that I will allow this to take as long as my brain needs it to take. Maybe having-received-an-email is not a reason to deny myself the joy of slow looking.
Luckily for us, museums and galleries are doing their bit to help us stay engaged in their spaces for longer. These organisations are well aware of visitors’ limited attention spans. Is it something to do with mobile phones? Being locked away during Covid? All that microplastic nestled in our brains from chewing on Polly Pockets’ clothes as a child? Either way, they’re on the case. They understand that, in a world in which (we all at least feel that) our attention is being pulled left, right, and centre, visuals alone just won’t cut it anymore. Welcome to the dawn of the multi-sensory exhibition.
From immersive installations, selfies from which flood social media after press preview day, like Tate’s recent Do Ho Suh: Walk The House, to the British Library’s Medieval Women: In Their Own Words, which saw thousands of visitors bending down to sniff recreated medieval smells through special doors disguised as abbey windows - museums are upping the sensory ante.
It’s not uncommon now for exhibitions to come with their own accompanying soundtrack, or for museums to include touchable examples for inquisitive viewers. Personally, it still feels illegal to touch anything in a museum, no matter how many signs say that I can. What if the sign itself was art, and I’m promptly shoulder-barged to the ground by a septuagenarian museum volunteer?
And there’s nothing museums like to do more than invite collectors and patrons to dine inside their gallery spaces, which ticks “taste” off the list. The rest of us will have to wait for the introduction of themed lollipops, which I reckon aren’t far around the corner.
The success of these multi-sensory exhibitions is not only evidence that we need organisations to give us more if we’re going to truly engage with what they’re showing us, but also of the rising desire from audiences for immersive, tangible spaces. We’re fed up with our phones, Zoom meetings, and turning off the medium screen once work ends and turning on the bigger screen to “wind down”. We want real spaces and real experiences, and dynamic exhibitions are the perfect way for arts organisations to capitalise on this demand.
On Tuesday, 28 October, gowithYamo is hosting an audio-sensory exhibition tour at Gasworks of their current exhibition Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien: Mémoires des corps, led by curator and educator Melissa Baksh. The tour will pair each of the artworks in the exhibition (which focuses on femininity, legend, and the cosmos) with a set of curated songs to examine how sound can transform our viewing experiences. Baksh is also a DJ, in addition to her work as an art historian, so we can guarantee that the selections will be impeccable.
The aim of the tour is to get us to engage with art with intention and feeling, and to slow down - no matter how long it takes us to put our shoes on.
I like art. In fact, I really like art. Liking art is sort of my job. So why, when I’m in an exhibition, do I dash through like I’m on Supermarket Sweep and Dale Winton has just told me to “get a move on”? Inevitably, I’ve hurtled past brilliant works that I’d genuinely love to see, and there’s always some masterpiece I didn’t realise was on display, until I spot it on a postcard in the gift shop. Whoops.
Why am I like this? And why are you probably like this, too?
Whether we find ourselves in a behemoth art fair where the sheer number of artworks is enough to make anyone seasick, or in a small gallery space with just a few paintings on the wall, we all seem to be uncomfortable taking our time.
I read something (okay, okay, I saw a video on Instagram) from a parent of young children, who said that the difference between parents who find the toddler stage unbearable and those who enjoy it is being comfortable with things taking as long as they take. For many of us, allowing a 2-year-old to put on their own shoes - which will take 10 minutes, rather than 10 seconds if you wrestle them into them yourself - would be testing, if not actively anxiety-inducing. What if we have somewhere to be!? The thing is, though, the perky American mother explained, that often, we don’t have anywhere to be. And yet we still rush.
In this laboured metaphor, I am the parent, my brain is the toddler, and looking at art is putting on shoes. Despite basically never going to exhibitions on a tight deadline, I gallop through, looking forward to when “see art” is ticked off my list and I can move on to the next thing. I now try to enter exhibitions with a deep breath and a pact with myself that I will allow this to take as long as my brain needs it to take. Maybe having-received-an-email is not a reason to deny myself the joy of slow looking.
Luckily for us, museums and galleries are doing their bit to help us stay engaged in their spaces for longer. These organisations are well aware of visitors’ limited attention spans. Is it something to do with mobile phones? Being locked away during Covid? All that microplastic nestled in our brains from chewing on Polly Pockets’ clothes as a child? Either way, they’re on the case. They understand that, in a world in which (we all at least feel that) our attention is being pulled left, right, and centre, visuals alone just won’t cut it anymore. Welcome to the dawn of the multi-sensory exhibition.
From immersive installations, selfies from which flood social media after press preview day, like Tate’s recent Do Ho Suh: Walk The House, to the British Library’s Medieval Women: In Their Own Words, which saw thousands of visitors bending down to sniff recreated medieval smells through special doors disguised as abbey windows - museums are upping the sensory ante.
It’s not uncommon now for exhibitions to come with their own accompanying soundtrack, or for museums to include touchable examples for inquisitive viewers. Personally, it still feels illegal to touch anything in a museum, no matter how many signs say that I can. What if the sign itself was art, and I’m promptly shoulder-barged to the ground by a septuagenarian museum volunteer?
And there’s nothing museums like to do more than invite collectors and patrons to dine inside their gallery spaces, which ticks “taste” off the list. The rest of us will have to wait for the introduction of themed lollipops, which I reckon aren’t far around the corner.
The success of these multi-sensory exhibitions is not only evidence that we need organisations to give us more if we’re going to truly engage with what they’re showing us, but also of the rising desire from audiences for immersive, tangible spaces. We’re fed up with our phones, Zoom meetings, and turning off the medium screen once work ends and turning on the bigger screen to “wind down”. We want real spaces and real experiences, and dynamic exhibitions are the perfect way for arts organisations to capitalise on this demand.
On Tuesday, 28 October, gowithYamo is hosting an audio-sensory exhibition tour at Gasworks of their current exhibition Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien: Mémoires des corps, led by curator and educator Melissa Baksh. The tour will pair each of the artworks in the exhibition (which focuses on femininity, legend, and the cosmos) with a set of curated songs to examine how sound can transform our viewing experiences. Baksh is also a DJ, in addition to her work as an art historian, so we can guarantee that the selections will be impeccable.
The aim of the tour is to get us to engage with art with intention and feeling, and to slow down - no matter how long it takes us to put our shoes on.
I like art. In fact, I really like art. Liking art is sort of my job. So why, when I’m in an exhibition, do I dash through like I’m on Supermarket Sweep and Dale Winton has just told me to “get a move on”? Inevitably, I’ve hurtled past brilliant works that I’d genuinely love to see, and there’s always some masterpiece I didn’t realise was on display, until I spot it on a postcard in the gift shop. Whoops.
Why am I like this? And why are you probably like this, too?
Whether we find ourselves in a behemoth art fair where the sheer number of artworks is enough to make anyone seasick, or in a small gallery space with just a few paintings on the wall, we all seem to be uncomfortable taking our time.
I read something (okay, okay, I saw a video on Instagram) from a parent of young children, who said that the difference between parents who find the toddler stage unbearable and those who enjoy it is being comfortable with things taking as long as they take. For many of us, allowing a 2-year-old to put on their own shoes - which will take 10 minutes, rather than 10 seconds if you wrestle them into them yourself - would be testing, if not actively anxiety-inducing. What if we have somewhere to be!? The thing is, though, the perky American mother explained, that often, we don’t have anywhere to be. And yet we still rush.
In this laboured metaphor, I am the parent, my brain is the toddler, and looking at art is putting on shoes. Despite basically never going to exhibitions on a tight deadline, I gallop through, looking forward to when “see art” is ticked off my list and I can move on to the next thing. I now try to enter exhibitions with a deep breath and a pact with myself that I will allow this to take as long as my brain needs it to take. Maybe having-received-an-email is not a reason to deny myself the joy of slow looking.
Luckily for us, museums and galleries are doing their bit to help us stay engaged in their spaces for longer. These organisations are well aware of visitors’ limited attention spans. Is it something to do with mobile phones? Being locked away during Covid? All that microplastic nestled in our brains from chewing on Polly Pockets’ clothes as a child? Either way, they’re on the case. They understand that, in a world in which (we all at least feel that) our attention is being pulled left, right, and centre, visuals alone just won’t cut it anymore. Welcome to the dawn of the multi-sensory exhibition.
From immersive installations, selfies from which flood social media after press preview day, like Tate’s recent Do Ho Suh: Walk The House, to the British Library’s Medieval Women: In Their Own Words, which saw thousands of visitors bending down to sniff recreated medieval smells through special doors disguised as abbey windows - museums are upping the sensory ante.
It’s not uncommon now for exhibitions to come with their own accompanying soundtrack, or for museums to include touchable examples for inquisitive viewers. Personally, it still feels illegal to touch anything in a museum, no matter how many signs say that I can. What if the sign itself was art, and I’m promptly shoulder-barged to the ground by a septuagenarian museum volunteer?
And there’s nothing museums like to do more than invite collectors and patrons to dine inside their gallery spaces, which ticks “taste” off the list. The rest of us will have to wait for the introduction of themed lollipops, which I reckon aren’t far around the corner.
The success of these multi-sensory exhibitions is not only evidence that we need organisations to give us more if we’re going to truly engage with what they’re showing us, but also of the rising desire from audiences for immersive, tangible spaces. We’re fed up with our phones, Zoom meetings, and turning off the medium screen once work ends and turning on the bigger screen to “wind down”. We want real spaces and real experiences, and dynamic exhibitions are the perfect way for arts organisations to capitalise on this demand.
On Tuesday, 28 October, gowithYamo is hosting an audio-sensory exhibition tour at Gasworks of their current exhibition Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien: Mémoires des corps, led by curator and educator Melissa Baksh. The tour will pair each of the artworks in the exhibition (which focuses on femininity, legend, and the cosmos) with a set of curated songs to examine how sound can transform our viewing experiences. Baksh is also a DJ, in addition to her work as an art historian, so we can guarantee that the selections will be impeccable.
The aim of the tour is to get us to engage with art with intention and feeling, and to slow down - no matter how long it takes us to put our shoes on.
I like art. In fact, I really like art. Liking art is sort of my job. So why, when I’m in an exhibition, do I dash through like I’m on Supermarket Sweep and Dale Winton has just told me to “get a move on”? Inevitably, I’ve hurtled past brilliant works that I’d genuinely love to see, and there’s always some masterpiece I didn’t realise was on display, until I spot it on a postcard in the gift shop. Whoops.
Why am I like this? And why are you probably like this, too?
Whether we find ourselves in a behemoth art fair where the sheer number of artworks is enough to make anyone seasick, or in a small gallery space with just a few paintings on the wall, we all seem to be uncomfortable taking our time.
I read something (okay, okay, I saw a video on Instagram) from a parent of young children, who said that the difference between parents who find the toddler stage unbearable and those who enjoy it is being comfortable with things taking as long as they take. For many of us, allowing a 2-year-old to put on their own shoes - which will take 10 minutes, rather than 10 seconds if you wrestle them into them yourself - would be testing, if not actively anxiety-inducing. What if we have somewhere to be!? The thing is, though, the perky American mother explained, that often, we don’t have anywhere to be. And yet we still rush.
In this laboured metaphor, I am the parent, my brain is the toddler, and looking at art is putting on shoes. Despite basically never going to exhibitions on a tight deadline, I gallop through, looking forward to when “see art” is ticked off my list and I can move on to the next thing. I now try to enter exhibitions with a deep breath and a pact with myself that I will allow this to take as long as my brain needs it to take. Maybe having-received-an-email is not a reason to deny myself the joy of slow looking.
Luckily for us, museums and galleries are doing their bit to help us stay engaged in their spaces for longer. These organisations are well aware of visitors’ limited attention spans. Is it something to do with mobile phones? Being locked away during Covid? All that microplastic nestled in our brains from chewing on Polly Pockets’ clothes as a child? Either way, they’re on the case. They understand that, in a world in which (we all at least feel that) our attention is being pulled left, right, and centre, visuals alone just won’t cut it anymore. Welcome to the dawn of the multi-sensory exhibition.
From immersive installations, selfies from which flood social media after press preview day, like Tate’s recent Do Ho Suh: Walk The House, to the British Library’s Medieval Women: In Their Own Words, which saw thousands of visitors bending down to sniff recreated medieval smells through special doors disguised as abbey windows - museums are upping the sensory ante.
It’s not uncommon now for exhibitions to come with their own accompanying soundtrack, or for museums to include touchable examples for inquisitive viewers. Personally, it still feels illegal to touch anything in a museum, no matter how many signs say that I can. What if the sign itself was art, and I’m promptly shoulder-barged to the ground by a septuagenarian museum volunteer?
And there’s nothing museums like to do more than invite collectors and patrons to dine inside their gallery spaces, which ticks “taste” off the list. The rest of us will have to wait for the introduction of themed lollipops, which I reckon aren’t far around the corner.
The success of these multi-sensory exhibitions is not only evidence that we need organisations to give us more if we’re going to truly engage with what they’re showing us, but also of the rising desire from audiences for immersive, tangible spaces. We’re fed up with our phones, Zoom meetings, and turning off the medium screen once work ends and turning on the bigger screen to “wind down”. We want real spaces and real experiences, and dynamic exhibitions are the perfect way for arts organisations to capitalise on this demand.
On Tuesday, 28 October, gowithYamo is hosting an audio-sensory exhibition tour at Gasworks of their current exhibition Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien: Mémoires des corps, led by curator and educator Melissa Baksh. The tour will pair each of the artworks in the exhibition (which focuses on femininity, legend, and the cosmos) with a set of curated songs to examine how sound can transform our viewing experiences. Baksh is also a DJ, in addition to her work as an art historian, so we can guarantee that the selections will be impeccable.
The aim of the tour is to get us to engage with art with intention and feeling, and to slow down - no matter how long it takes us to put our shoes on.
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