Art Gallery or Selfie Backdrop? The Instagrammability of Museum Visits

In her 2016 TED talk, 'Art in the Age of Instagram', JiaJia Fei, then the associate director of digital marketing at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and currently the director of digital at the Jewish Museum, observed that the rise of social media has transformed the 'art' object into a 'social' object.

Her talk came after James Turrell's light installation at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, which became the most Instagrammed exhibition in the museum's history, despite the artist’s public request to prohibit photos, believing they would ruin the experience of the installation. 

In 2024, we live in the age of hyper-internet — social media, content creation, reels, TikTok, ‘aesthetics’ and #pinterestcore. This pervasive online culture directly influences our experiences of art galleries and museums.

Today, ‘romanticisation’ sells. We’re re-introducing the idea of art gallery/museum dates through a 10-second Instagram reel and selling their Pinterest and aesthetic value by questioning the missing fun, romance and glamour from the viewer's life. However, aren’t most of these reels staged? What we see in the video is half of what the person might have experienced in real life. Most of the time, what’s in front of the camera, in the frame, is acted in a certain way to attain an ‘idealistic and romantic’ quality.

This quality is the product to be sold. Outside the frame, there might have been complete chaos and a crowd. When you hit the ‘record’ or ‘click’ button, the very act of photographing changes the experience. It mediates how you view the art piece/installation, how long you view it, and for what purpose you view it. 

In a study by psychological scientist Linda Henkel of Fairfield University, it was found that taking photos of objects worsened participants' memory of those objects and their details. Published in Psychological Science, the research was partly inspired by Henkel’s observation of people frequently taking photos without fully engaging at the moment.

Henkel experimented with the Bellarmine Museum of Art, where undergraduates were either asked to photograph or simply observe certain objects. The following day, their memory of these objects was tested. Results showed that participants who took photos had poorer recognition and could recall fewer details compared to those who only observed. Henkel termed this the “photo-taking impairment effect,” explaining that relying on cameras to remember events can negatively impact our memory of those experiences.

Art installations and immersive, interactive art galleries attract a higher volume of public visitors. Can one say that such curated art spaces allow the visitor to be immersed in the art, becoming the ‘art’ itself? Perhaps this is why during Van Gogh’s 360 exhibition, the never-ending photos and videos of people in the space flooding social media platforms Instagram and X were so appealing — you could be a part of Van Gogh’s starry nights, wheat field with crows, and vase with fifteen sunflowers, art within art — an idealistic, Instagram-Pinterest aesthetic version of yourself. 

Fei herself called the mobile phone photography in the museums a reductive act in itself. It reduces you from the exhibition. What is the innate desire to ‘click’ yourself with the museum in the backdrop and announce to your imagined audience that you were there? The act of clicking, updating, and uploading becomes a desired identity in itself.  According to research she refers to, people who went through a museum with an aim of taking photos for social media, enjoyed it less than just looking at art for the sake of art.

Also read: Interview | Art Takes Viewers on a Journey that Traverses Backward and Forward in Time: Avijit Dutta

Kiran Nadar Museum of Art is a prime example of this discussion. It has been in a constant array of Instagram reels and photos since last winter when its exhibition, ‘MIRROR/ MAZE’ became popular on the platform. With its recent exhibition on display, ‘Walking Through a Songline’, the museum is receiving many visitors every day. The exhibition is an interactive digital display of ancient and timeless stories of Australia’s First Nations people, where at its core, is the dreaming story of the Seven Sisters. The exhibition is a celebration and acknowledgment of the Aboriginal cultures of Australia — the people of the island continent before the white man arrived. 

Every friend I have talked to or know has already visited or is planning to visit. I, on the other hand, visited the exhibition in the first week of July. However, Instagram had already revealed most of the exhibition to me, taking away the surprise element of the displays, like the immersive light rooms, the constellation room, or the one where the visitors are supposed to lie down and look at the display put on the ceiling.

Most of these reels feature the user themselves in the space, either posing or pretending to be ‘caught in the act’. Pictures and videos showcase the participant becoming ‘art’ in itself, centering oneself at the moment, perhaps, in the attempt to take away the focus from the exhibition to oneself — again, fulfilling the desire to carve the romanticised ‘identity’ for the imagined audience. 

Although the immersive Van Gogh art experience was a missed opportunity for many of us — limited to select cities in India and hindered by a high entry fee —we tried to make up for it this time. Upon my visit, as we sat against the walls of the room, in the immersive light experience, many of the visitors simply posed for photographs as their faces and bodies got drenched in different colours and shapes of light — becoming a piece of the art themselves. 

These photographs were accompanied by flashes and bickering which altered the experience of other visitors who were there to observe, listen, and follow the story being narrated along with the moving visuals in the room. The commotion caused by the need to get a ‘good’ or ‘satisfactory’ photograph or video of oneself did not just reduce them from the experience of it but the surrounding, perhaps the more eager museum/exhibition visitor who is there to actually experience it also got distracted.

The ‘no photography’ rule in museums and exhibitions is often debatable. Over the years, museums and art galleries have lifted this rule as it encourages more people to visit, click photographs of the exhibition in their ways, and interact through it. The mobile phone, or one can interchangeably use the word camera, has become, as if a mediator between the person and the exhibition. It adds to the Gen Z social media definition of an intellectual-museum-lover-literature-non-wannabe-person when one announces their museum/art gallery visit, as if almost for the rush of self-validation. Of course, this doesn’t hold true for a lot of people. 

Kiran Nadar Museum of Art’s ‘Walking Through a Songline’, has become a spot for a lot of people on the internet to create content to sell. It has become the latest selfie spot, and one is left to wonder, if the visit is made more to absorb the motive/story/purpose of the exhibition, or was it just for its outward appeal? It works both in favour and against, because ultimately, art is subjective, yet one cannot completely ignore the fact that the internet has infused this narcissistic desire to be clicked with the artistic pieces/installations, rather than studying them. 

Aliya Khan is currently pursuing Masters in Mass Communication from AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia.

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