Visiting museums as a museum professional can be… complicated.
You walk into a gallery, and instead of simply soaking in the experience, your eyes dart to the wall labels, scrutinize the layout, and mentally rewrite the interpretive text. You spot the typos, analyze the lighting, question the object placement—every detail jumps out and pulls you out of the moment. You know what it takes to write those labels, install those cases, and design those experiences. And because of that, it’s hard not to see everything through a professional lens.
But here’s the thing: visiting museums is also great.
For every “Why did they do it that way?” moment, there’s often a surprising spark of inspiration—a fresh interpretive approach, a clever design choice, or a storytelling idea you might carry into your own work. Once I realized that, I started to rethink how I approached museum visits when I wasn’t officially on the clock.
One of the most helpful things I’ve done? Go with friends and family who aren’t museum professionals. Watching them explore a space, ask questions, and get excited about things I might have glossed over reminds me why we do this work in the first place.
I also started building in some playful habits to help me step out of critique mode and back into wonder mode. One of my favorites? Picking an exhibit or a work of art and assigning it a soundtrack or theme song from my music playlist. What feels like it belongs in the background of that gallery? What song tells the same story in a different way? It’s a fun and imaginative way to connect with collections on a personal level—and it helps shift my perspective from professional to playful.
So here’s my question to you:
How do you get yourself out of professional mode to connect with exhibits and art?
If you’d like a few more ideas to help reframe your museum visits, download the Reframing Your Visit Mini-Toolkit—a small set of creative prompts to refresh your connection with the work we love.
You can also reach out in the comments to your museum community, and we can work together to shift our lens. Or reach out directly, insight@kaleidoscopehf.com
Alt Text: Watercolor illustration of bold purple eyeglasses framed by swirling decorative flourishes—blue and teal on the left, and yellow, orange, and red on the right.
Next Sunday’s feature is, OMG! It has Lead!, and the Lead Testing Protocol & Mitigation Strategies Mini-Toolkit.
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