"We're going to let people grab any masterpiece they like and just take a shit on it."

According to the ever-trustworthy Onion newspaper, the conservative Metropolitan Museum of Art is now inviting visitors to grope, hug, lick, and shmush their faces all over its prized collections. With the headline "Struggling Museum Now Allowing Patrons to Touch Paintings," the article is a sign of our times, reflecting museums' struggles to generate extra revenue in an economy in which memberships are renewed at lower levels, if at all, and funding declines with the Dow, only to be liquidated along with the businesses whose names once appeared in exhibition credits. I think that inviting people to touch the art would be a lucrative success, indulging visitors in their desire to touch the untouchable, engage in the forbidden, and interact with "originals"--of course the success of inviting tactile interaction would be incredibly short term, only to make museums obsolete through the destruction of its objects. Still I can't help but wish I could climb into a sarcophagus and assault a Van Gogh.

Ironically, the museum is the forum in which one is most inclined to touch, and not simply because it is forbidden. In a place filled with enticing and unfamiliar textures and materials, the obvious reaction is to reach out and touch. Further, knowing the untouchable object was made through the act of handling and manipulating makes it seem even more appropriate to touch. But alas, we cannot, and for good reason...but it's kind of paradoxical when you think about it.

Most museum educators have felt that pang when their blood runs cold as they see a visitor brush their hand along a painting, lean against a sculpture, or even walk too close to an object, for fear that something will break or tarnish under their watch. But honestly, who hasn't wished they could touch the art? Who hasn't seen people breaking the rules and feel slightly envious that they were able to cop a feel?

A lot of times kids are better at following the no-touching rule than adults, possibly because they are accustomed to following rules--once at the beginning of a museum tour, during one of my "keep your hands to yourself" intro spiels, I was in the middle of asking the kids why we shouldn't touch the art. I was so pleased at how responsive and receptive they were...only to look over their heads and see their teacher leaning against a Rodin.

Another time I saw a docent demonstrate kinetic art to her group by actually moving the once mobile part of a sculpture--of course upon its advent into the museum world, the sculpture was never to move again (funny to think that in a museum's effort to reverse time, even art work that was intended to be touched is rendered untouchable, but that's beside the point). When I called her on it, she insisted that her role at the museum was more important than mine and that she knew how to touch the art while I certainly did not (though I was working in the department in which this particular object was a part). Needless to say I had to tattle on her and a meeting was called to reiterate to the docents that they could not, under any circumstances, touch the art.

Maybe this particular docent was a bit out of touch, pun intended, but twenty-somethings also have trouble keeping their hands off the art--one college student on a tour essentially felt up a nude statue in the middle of my talk to the amusement of his friends (honestly it was kind of hilarious).

Anyway, even though the reasons for prohibiting touching in a museum are imperative to preserve art, it does manifest a barrier between object and visitor. I am never more aware of my surroundings or more self-conscious of the space I occupy than when I'm in a museum...it's like sitting on a white couch holding a glass of red wine. What's frustrating is I'm not sure of a solution. Perhaps offering samples of materials that look especially enticing (lame idea, I know. Just brainstorming). Maybe better education about why not to touch the art--the Philadelphia Museum displays images of what a sculpture looked like originally and what it looks like after years of being handled. More signage of this nature might at least make the no-touching rule less foreign. Perhaps simply offering more interactives with tactile components will satisfy our urge to touch--Met director Tom Campbell seems to agree, as he reported to the Onion: "Sometimes you have to go that extra mile to grab people's attention. Next year we're going to let people grab any masterpiece they like and just take a shit on it."