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Major Museums Start Banning Selfie Sticks
An anonymous reader shares these articles about museums banning the dreaded selfie stick. "Selfie sticks, the logical 'extension' of an already irksome activity, were recently banned in Premier League soccer stadiums. Now museums around the world are starting to do the same over worries of accidental damage to artwork. The Smithsonian barred their use effective last week as a 'preventative measure to protect visitors and museum objects,' especially on crowded days. Meanwhile, a formal ban is pending at Versailles palace and Centre Pompidou in France, and visitors are now being told to stow their sticks by guards at the Louvre. Both Pompidou and the Louvre will continue to allow regular photography and selfies."
On my visits there, I remember signs prohibiting photography...not that anybody paid any attention to them.
It's been a while...maybe it was just flash photography.
We visited the Sistene Chapel and the tour stops right outside the room and the guide is very clear "Be quiet and absolutely no flash photography" and then you walk in and its absolutely packed with people being loud and taking flash pictures.
//TODO: Insert catchy phrase
People who have to deal with a lot of them in moderately crowded spaces with multiple millions of dollars' worth of precious, irreplaceable, objects on display (objects that they are employed to protect), that's who.
Now there is an illness that needs a custom disease to wipe out those who take them...
When I was in the Louvre last year, I was amazed at what was going on in front of the Mona Lisa. Most people had their backs to it.
There were more people preoccupied with getting a photograph of themselves in front of it than there were people looking at the damn thing.
Same story at Venus de Milo statue.
An observation that I made (and this is nothing more than an observation) is that everyone wielding a selfie stick and not looking at the art was Asian.
It is, People take shittons more photos now than they used to. The reasons are obvious. Moden technology has enabled cheap photography- where it wasn't too long ago that you had to bring around extra equipment, rolls of film, then get them developed, or even just the fact that SD cards were limiting. Now I can take more photos than I Have time to review- but that is the problem. People are spending more time taking pictures and less time actually experiencing life because of the status, The Facebook status. People aren't making memory books, they are trying to show their friends they are cool and hip and whatever.
Selfie sticks, the only thing that can rival drones in their speed of being banned.
I was at the Museum of Natural History in DC a few weeks ago and got hit in the face more than once with those stupid things. I complained to the curator's office before I left, and I'm glad I'm apparently not alone in doing so.
Nobody's going to run off with your camera. Just ask someone nearby to take a photo of you.
Your selfie stick is a lot less likely to run away with your phone than that oh-so-honest person you asked to take a picture of you in Italy.
The odds of another tourist stealing your camera when you ask them to take a picture is pretty much 0%.
The odds of a someone (especially a poor local) who asks YOU if you would them to take a picture of you
stealing your camerais pretty much 100%. This is the same advice I give my kids. If you get lost, don't
wait for someone to approach you, instead walk up to the first person you see and ask for help. Most people
are normal law abiding citizens, if you play the odds and pick someone randomly then your chances of getting
a criminal are very small. If instead you let them approach you then they are picking you which makes the
odds of them being a criminal considerably higher.