Watching Seeing

Watching Seeing

In a museum, I always feel torn between the works and the visitors. There is no better place than a museum to witness the spectacle of our fellow human beings. I watch them. I watch how they watch and also how they don’t watch, how they pass by certain masterpieces without seeing them, lost in their fixed thoughts, or how they sometimes stop a long while in front of a single work. This is also an opportunity to learn how they dress, how they stand or move about, and to guess their nationality, age, profession, tastes. Since I was a teenager, I’ve known that I go to museums just as much to observe the visitors as to see the artworks. Every regular museum visitor is, I imagine, a potential or actual voyeur. That’s my case, at least.