Museum Tips: How to Visit a Museum
Museums Provide Varying Visit Experiences Depending on the Size and Type of Museum
If you haven't been to a museum in a long time, or have never been to a museum, this article explains the most common ways to visit and enjoy a museum.
Self-guided and Guided Tours
Self-guided tours mean you wander at your own pace, seeing what you want. This is the most common format for visiting museums. The advantages include going at your own pace, resting when you want, and self-selecting the art and objects you want to focus on. The disadvantages include not learning the inside scoop from a museum guide and perhaps feeling overwhelmed about what are the most intriguing objects in the museum.
Some museums only provide guided tours. These can be smaller museums and historic house museums, among others. Good museum tour guides are filled with knowledge, have good public speaking skills, incorporate stories not just facts, supplement their tours with objects to touch or images to examine, and provide opportunities to ask questions. Some larger museums have multiple guided tours based on a specific topic or time period. For example: Impressionist art, early American furniture, and 19th century transportation. It's appropriate to ask questions of the tour guide or docent.
Audio Tours
Audio tours can be a small device you hold or that hangs on a cord around your neck, or it might be something you access on your phone. They often have choices as to language, adult or child version, and which aspects you listen to or skip past. Smaller museums may not have any audio tours. Larger museums might have multiple audio tour options based on special exhibits or topics. Audio tours can be an excellent enhancement to a museum visit. At the same time, they can cut down on the natural interactions and discussions that you might have with the friends or family that have accompanied you to the museum.
What to Look At?
Especially at large museums such as the Museum of Natural History in New York or the Art Institute of Chicago, the collections are massive and it's easy to be overwhelmed with deciding what to look at. Be selective and go at a pace that's comfortable for you. Some visitors will want to see lots at a fast pace; others will want to slowly admire a small number of artifacts. Both are correct!
At large museums, you might select a specific exhibit or gallery you want to explore. An alternative to picking the most famous objects is to ask a museum guard, docent, or admissions desk employee what their favorite object or gallery is. Or, you might ask where you can find art that ties into your hobbies, for example, paintings or objects that relate to gardening, or antique furniture that lets you indulge in your woodworking interest.
When did you last visit a museum? What did you think? What did you feel?
Heya.
In order to start off with I check their website in question. I either then email or call for details on events and so on. I make some brief summary notes too. I take a packed lunch on the day of the outing. Best wishes.
I then make a packed lunch in advance the day before to eat. This is taken in a free small bag.
At the museum we eat our sandwiches. Then we go and explore. We do a classic workshop as well. Sometimes there is a quick talk that we go to. We have a lot of fun. We see the displays and so on. The talk is fun.