Sunday, May 18, 2008

sleepless in...museum


Hundreds of people on the streets, concerts, exhibitions, performances and many, many more - any idea what an event may encompass so much and at the same time offer so little more than every single day? The answer is another edition of a worldwide known festival "Long Night of Museums". I was just wondering why this event is so popular. But at the very beginning, I would like to point out the fact that I also took part in this and had lots of fun and enriched my cultural knowledge in just a couple of hours.

The idea of the event is to open all museums in the city, make them available to anybody, free of charge, during a weekend night (this ime it was on Saturday, May 17, from 5 pm to 1 am). Generally the exibitions that are presented at the museums do not differ significantly from their usual look, there might be, however, some additional performances, lectures or workshops organized. But it still surprises me that so many people are attracted to come and see the exhibitions, very often even those who would never think of visiting a place like a museum on a regular basis. Is it just a matter of money? Could a simple marketing trick stimulate masses to literally storm every possible museum? I doubt it. So there must be something else in it that makes a night at the museum so attractive. Maybe it is the atmosphere of discovering secrets, of mistery and unveiling the unknown places in the middle of the night that makes the event so luring. Or maybe people just want to explore art and history and such events just encourage them to do so. Hopefully, some will savor in higher culture and drop by to the museum not just during this one night in year. :)

3 comments:

AgataL said...

Thanks for your interesting account of the event - its popularity is a mystery to me, too.
BTW, I never got a link to your blog! I just found it through your comments on another blog. Bad girl! ;)

Karolina said...

ooops...it must have vanished from my mind in misterious circumstances
:) I am deeply sorry! And promise to make it up somehow (I don't know how yet, but I will try to figure it out) :)

koozaa said...

It's puzzling indeed... maybe people always think: I still have some time to go there, surely I'll find some time in future to go there... And when they are invited for free and they can do it at night, they think: how could I miss such an occasion?:) On top of that it's participating in a kind of cultural activity, so it's trendy to go there. You can always say you participated in this event and you had so much fun! Would you tell your friends you went to museum after work because you were just interested in art?:)))
By the way, you can take me with you next time:)