I stand by my opinion, guided tours in the museum are just useless distraction that should have no place in the museums, read up on the items yourself or use audio guide. Don't wanna to educate yourself? then don't bother coming to the museums or churches. Bunch of grown-ups needing guides in the museum, that's just pathetic

There's a big difference between 10 considerate people with a guide with the whisper system, and 20-30 not-so-considerate people with a guide who has to shout to be heard by the people at the back of the group. And moving to a different room doesn't work if there's a lot of groups, you just encounter another one in the next room, plus in a museum it can break the flow.

I don't think I'm in favor of banning groups entirely, but it would be great if there were non-group times.

<<Bunch of grown-ups needing guides in the museum, that's just pathetic>>

While I am a huge fan of learning as much as I can ahead of time through reading, the Internet, videos, etc., and while I have rarely taken a guided tour of a museum in Europe other than with my good friend who is a tour guide (and we sure didn't bother anyone; it was just the two of us, whispering),I have to disagree.

I just last night went to a curator-guided tour of a new exhibit at the Phillips Collection here in Washington, DC. I had already done my homework on the artist (Per Kirkeby), but he's hardly known here in the USA, despite being wildly famous in Europe. I learned all kinds of details about him and his works from the curators that I probably never would have gleaned no matter how much research I'd done.

The Phillips, however, doesn't do tours during regular-admission hours, so there's no overlap with normal museum attendees.

As someone with an interest in art, but who doesn't know a lot about it, I really like tours in art museums - led by a person or an audio tour. Of course I can read up (and usually do), but I really don't want to memorize a bunch of stuff ahead of time and I certainly don't want to wander around a museum with my nose in a book - the information always sticks better when I hear it while actually looking at the artwork.

So if anybody thinks this make me pathetic, well we are all entitled to our opinions. I have some thoughts about you too ;) I guess it is good we don't travel together.