Look with your eyes, not with your hands

A child broke an ancient pot in a museum in Israel, apparently trying to see what was inside it. The unintentional clay piñata did not in fact contain candy (or anything), but it was broken nonetheless. The museum have been rather nice about it, apparently inviting the child back.

Of course this kid isn’t the first person to break something on display. There was the spectacular incident at the Fitzwilliam museum, in which a guy took a spill on a staircase and managed to take out THREE Qing vases on his way.

Broken vases on the staircase

The museum though now has a rather interesting web page detailing how they managed to repair the vases. Daunting stuff, given that they not only smashed on the floor, they were further crushed under foot by people rushing to render first aid to the fallen visitor. But it’s fascinating to see the process of repair.

The question was asked after this incident of why the vases were on an open windowsill rather than inside a locked cabinet. And it’s the kind of thing museum curators debate.

I work with museums and it can be a challenge to decide how things are best displayed. But the trend towards “interactive” museum displays does, unfortunately, create an impression in visitors that anything not locked away is ok to touch. I’m sometimes unsure when I visit a museum for the first time, which are the “play with this” items and which are the “don’t touch that” items, when there seem to be both in the same room - which is a design failure on the part of the curator.

The other part of the failure is visitors. I recall looking on with horror some years ago at the Louvre as a visitor lifted their toddler on top of a statue to take a picture (there were no guards around to say anything).

If anything, it is worse now with selfie-takers, who have managed to wreak destruction in museums all over the place. This is, as they say, why we can’t have nice things.