THE HERD INSTINCT AND THE MUSEUM BLOCKBUSTER

Museum visitors pay large sums of money to see beautiful paintings in blockbuster exhibitions, but must view them in conditions that are about as conducive to aesthetic pleasure as rush-hour strap-hanging in the subway, Stuart Jeffries writes in The Guardian. “That is not to say that we must have conditions that enable us to spend hours in front of a painting,” writes Jeffries, “but the herd instinct the modern blockbuster show produces does not do the greatest art justice.”