Things that donors know: why is it forbidden to touch the exhibits in the museum?

Seemingly a trivial question, it is forbidden to touch the museum because it will destroy the exhibits, so no

Gil asks "Why is it forbidden to touch the museum"?

Seemingly a trivial question, it is forbidden to touch the museum because it will destroy the exhibits.
So that's not it.

If you touch the picture, you may leave a fingerprint, but most of the three-dimensional exhibits: statues, jewelry, archaeological finds, coins will not be damaged by contact. Fact: Many hands touched them until they reached the display cabinet. Every coin that can be viewed today through thick glass was designed so that people would hold it with their fingers and every piece of jewelry was designed to be in contact with human skin and to be viewed when held in the palm of the hand in front of the eyes.

The "museum manners" that we are familiar with and that the school students who are taken there are repeatedly warned about were born in the 19th century. Until then, touch was considered an important part of getting to know and learning about these objects. The forefather of the museum is the "Cabinet of Curiosity" where nobles exhibited art, antiques, gems, rare plants, jewelry and other objects that arouse wonder or interest. For the owner of the house, the purpose of the display was to glorify his name and the viewer wanted to satisfy his curiosity.

The early museum was liberal and chaotic: in the decorated halls, the items were not separated from each other according to defined fields of thought (art, archaeology, folklore, nature...) and there was no agreed hierarchy of importance - a stuffed bear lived there in a relaxed neighborhood between a portrait of the owner of the estate and an ancient Roman statue. In such an atmosphere of curiosity and wonder, the sense of sight did not have a privileged status over the other senses. From tourist diaries we can learn that the visitors picked up, touched, smelled and even wore or wore exhibits. Those accustomed to the sterility of the modern museum can only envy the experience of a tourist who visited the British Museum in 1753 and left an enthusiastic description of the measurement of a helmet from ancient Carthage. The idea sounds shocking to us, but on second thought: what damage can a contemporary top do to a metal hat that survived Hannibal's wars?

Travel diaries from the 17th and 18th centuries even contain complaints about a lack of museum etiquette, but those who need re-education according to these documents are actually lazy guards who were late opening drawers and cupboards at the request of tourists who asked to examine jewelry the same way they examine it in stores: rolling it in the palm of their hand. Even those who were intrigued by the crown jewels on display at the Tower of London could touch them (albeit under close supervision). Touch was especially important in the art of sculpture, the great poet and philosopher Goethe wrote at the end of the 18th century that touch is essential to the appreciation of a sculpture "Look with the eye that senses, sense with the hand that sees" commanded the seeker of art. In fact, every piece of sculpture you will see that is more than 150 years old was created by an artist who has never seen and could not have imagined, but a museum is equipped with "do not touch" signs and stern guards.

So how were the museum etiquettes born after all?

In the 19th century, the great museums grew and gained the status of national institutions. First the Louvre in Paris followed by museums in the other capital cities of Europe. The museum turned from a display designed to satisfy curiosity and study into an official institution that preserves the heritage and values ​​of aesthetics and history. Accordingly, the museums were housed in palaces or buildings inspired by ancient temples. The curators of the museum were again not the owners of the collection but those who were recognized as authorities in matters of aesthetics and culture. The rise in prestige of the institution led to the reversal of the relationship between the exhibited and the exhibition space. The museum is not only a collection of objects of interest or aesthetic value, but the very presentation in the museum gives the work an "aura", importance and respectability.

The Dada artist Marcel Duchamp exposed this mechanism when he turned a public variable into a work of art for everything by detaching it from its original place and function and placing it in a museum. The visit to the museum has become a ritual in which a person goes to a kind of "art temple" and associates himself with a high culture that some people bother to define its boundaries. And like any ceremony it also needs strict rules of conduct, curiosity and wonder gave way to the "museum experience" in which a person gains, at least in his own eyes, the status of a person of culture capable of appreciating masterpieces.

The 19th century, in which the museum we know was designed, was also a period of decline in the sense of touch. It is true that Maimonides, following Aristotle, believed that "the sense of touch is a disgrace to us .. and because of it we crave eating, drinking, and sexual intercourse" (Morah Nabukim, Part III), but the departure from the Middle Ages marked a temporary legitimization of the sensations of touch. In the 17th century he declared Robert Hooke, one of the fathers of the scientific revolution (and who discovered the connection between the force exerted on a spring and its elongation) who was also the curator of the "Royal Society" museum that a serious and diligent researcher should touch and feel "the taste, the smell, the cold or the heat, the weight, the roughness or the smoothness, the hardness, the tension, the fragility, the slipperiness.. And not to be content like children with looking at pictures." The corona epidemic in this respect is a knock out of Rambam to Robert Hook when every contact with the world mediated by the sense of the outcast includes hugging grandma and touching vegetables in the market evokes fear.

In the 19th century, the modern science tools the microscope and the telescope were the only ones that defined what "scientific observation" was and gave primacy to the sense of sight. The scientific information was distributed in books and professional press and absorbed only through the eyes. For these thinkers and scientists, moving, touching or smelling were no longer considered serious means of inquiry and not even a legitimate way of aesthetic experience. The museum that now aspired to "seriousness" and respectability reflected this perception and quiet and distant viewing became the only legitimate way to experience it. The new manners had another, disguised advantage, those who had trouble getting used to such restrained behavior simply avoided visits to the museum. Thus the danger that the nationalization of the museums would flood them with members of the lower classes was repelled and the galleries remained, just like in the days of the feudal regime a meeting place for the elites.

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