Museums or shopping?
 

In a recent post someone asked if they should waste a good shopping day on going to a museum. Another poster commented that many people are "talked into" going to museums when they would never do such a thing at home.

Do people really not go to museums at hone? When in Europe are they forced into going by peer pressure when they would much rather be speding time shopping?

IMHO travel is about learning new things and understanding different people and cultures rather than about shopping. Am I in the minority?

Why would someone go to a museum if he's not interested? I'm sure he won't learn a lot that way!
This is all about interests. Most probably we all travel to learn new things and understand different cultures, but to me there's a lot more than museums. I rather spend my time visiting typical villages or just sitting somewhere and observing people.
And I can learn from other nations' shopping habits as well!

Myriam is right, sometimes the best part of travel is the pleasure of discovering small towns, squares or lovely churches, markets or just people watching...

Nytraveler:

IMO you are not in the minority. I live in EGADS-NJ, my Daughter, sisters, friends and their children all visit the local, Phila, And aren't we lucky the NY museums whenever we can.
4-5 times a year a group of about 40 women get tickets for a special collection at the Met, or Guggenheim, broadway, opera. What a treat.

My daughter and I will have the priv. to enjoy florence on Easter Sunday this year, we have researched all of the info that this site has on tips for timing our museum experience.

My daughter is 13, she has enjoyed museums even as a small child, we do not live far from Phil Mus of Art, they have a great children's program for children each Sun, she enjoyed this a great deal. I do have friends who will come with us to the shows or museums and actually go into the Gap,or Macy's to shop, we have these 15 mins from our house.
I have found some people want to visit different places but find comfort in the familiar, and are afraid to try new things.

Thank you for your informative posts, we are having a ball planning this trip.

"IMHO travel is about learning new things and understanding different people and cultures rather than about shopping. "

I agree with MyraimC: Museums can inform you about the PAST of an area, but shopping as the locals do, in local markets, street fairs, and supermarkets, can be extremely informative about the culture in the present. Most museums are very passive experiences, and individuals' tolerance for this just naturally varies a lot.

(I would agree that IMHO regular department store/mall shopping is a complete waste of time, whenever and wherever it's done.)

Well, not to diss Marshall McLuhan, but in this case the medium isn't the message. Or in other words, there are other vehicles besides museums that have 'museum-like' subjects. Shopping, TV, the Internet, books can all be such vehicles.

For example, I enjoy visiting the official web sites of national art galleries when I'm at home; reading historical accounts (e.g. "Paris 1919" by Margaret MacMillan); or watching PBS documentaries or historical drama; but no, I don't often get to a museum. Partly because we don't have that many, and those we have, are small. And partly because I need a vacation to really unwind and enjoy a museum, without feeling guilty that I ought to be doing chores, etc...

At home, I'm not a great shopper; I'm much obliged to friends and family who let me take them to lunch instead of buy them gifts, at which I don't have much talent. But truly I don't see any reason why shopping need necessarily be an 'inferior' way to spend a trip abroad, for surely one can learn a great deal about a country from the products it manufactures and sells, and/or or the crops that it grows (especially the type of grapes used in the local wine), and/or the local foodstuffs, etc. And one can find in museums clothing and jewellry and so forth that in the past was sold in the marketplace.

As for being 'talked into'doing something, yes, I seem to remember that post. However, I don't see being open to persuasion as a character deficit, for of what else does 'having an open mind' consist?

Another great thread topic, nytraveler.

Shopping is fine if it's on the way back from a museum. I rarely go out of my way to find a shop or a restaurant but I'll travel far for a really good museum, especially modern art. The bonus often is I can find unique things in the museum's gift shop. And yes, I have a couple of memberships to the museums at home and I go often. Sometimes just to look at a particular painting I admire because in a way it?s mine but I never have to paint a room around it.
When you think about it going to a museum is a bit like shopping. Except you don't have to bring all the stuff home and dust it.

People travel for different reasons. I don't think it is my place to say which is correct. The goal is to enjoy yourself.

I shop a lot AT museums.

Best wishes,

Rex

The best part about going in vacation is to be able to do what we like to do...
For some people, like myself for example, going to museums,churches is part of the fun about travelling..However, i realize that we all have different perspectives , like or dislike , if a person wants to spend all day shopping..this is fun also..
A chacun son gout..

I will always spend a few days looking around the shops on holiday, but I see this as a way of familiarising oneself with the local people and environment. However, I rarely buy any clothes, after all, the major and not so major designers are all here in London at the same cost. So why buy something at the same price with no possibility of returning it.

Jewellery is usually a better buy, especially contemporary Italian, which is much cheaper there than here in London.

Furthermore, the service is so appalling in London it makes a change to talk to the assistants abroad who show so much more interest in the stock that they carry.

I will always see the museums and galleries I wish to see, if they are close to shops one has "killed two birds with one stone". Of course there is always a limit on how long one can spend time on holiday shopping.

I enjoy both, and like Rex, I enjoy shopping at the museum. I go to museums everywhere I travel. We only have a couple where I live. I am a member at the art institutes here in Minneapolis and in Chicago. I like to look in shops see what's different, and alike, in a different country. I find it interesting to wander around a grocery store, looking at the offerings, the prices and comparing it to home. I just think this helps me to understand where I am visiting a little bit more. I also like to walk a lot and stores are everywhere, so if a store looks interesting and I have time, I'll stop in. I like to buy myself treasures from my travels and prefer that they are unique to the area I'm visiting. So, by spending a little time wandering on my way to the museumns or whatever else interests me, I sometimes find great treasures. If I'm traveling with someone who doesn't enjoy going into shops, we will schedule "alone" time for each of us to do what we want. I usually need a break to be alone at some point anyway, so this helps me. I guess it is a personal opinion and whether shopping nor visiting museums is the "right thing for you."

I love going to museums and at home I hate to shop. But when I am on vacation, shopping is a whole different experience. It is fascinating to see the differences between the things available at home and the things available abroad. Even the way things are packaged and presented can be very different and indeed educational about a culture. I learn much more about modern French life in Monoprix than I do at the Louvre. A street market is a wonderful experience in cultural immersion.

Seeking out unique crafts, flea market items, and other objects which will always remind me of my vacations has become a source of great enjoyment on vacation.

I also love watching television abroad. I love watching the commercials, the game shows, the news, it's all just a little bit different. Two weeks ago my family watched the most amazing dating show in Rome, called "Kiss and Tell". We all learned a lot about Italian culture in that half hour.

I believe there are plenty of people who are not going to have a lot of fun in museums. That doesn't mean that they won't learn anything about different cultures by traveling abroad.

I'm a museum junkie! I think Mcgeezer and I would get along fine, as we too have museum memberships and always go for temporary exhibits we are interested in and I love shopping in museum stores. It seems they always have such different and unique things (often related to a particular exhibit) and I buy lots of Christmas presents, as well as things for myself.

Let's face it, there's no right or wrong way to travel in terms of sightseeing or not, museums or not, people watching or not. It's up to the traveler to choose what he/she is interested in and do it.

For myself for example, I can't imagine going to Florence and not visiting the art museums. But to each his own. I do love going to grocery stores everyplace we visit and often buying things we can't find here. We love eating outside, which certainly gives you the opportunity to people watch while enjoying your meal.

Interesting how anti-museum some of you feel but that's your take.

Shopping bores me and I love museums BUT I do not expect everybody to share my likes and dislikes. I frequently travel with a good friend who loves to shop. She drops me off at a museum or art gallery or bookstore or garden while she shops - No boredom, no conflicts.

I agree that there are all sorts of ways of learning about another culture. One of the things I love to do while strolling is look in the window of real estarte agents and employment agencies - to see what jobs/houses they have to offer, how they describe then, what prices are, what standards are expected etc (I think its really odd that in a lot of europe appliances seem to be mostly miniatures - not just in small apartments either).

But to me the major museums are highlights of any trip - representing the aboslute best of western civilization over the past couple of thousand years and speaking to so much of our common history and how we all got to where we are today. (Churches, castles and other historic sights are also tops on my lists.) Not that shopping is all bad. When I have time I like to browse the street markets and craft stores and even pharmacies and food markets - but to me the eternal search for the latest designer duds is smply fatal.

You can count me into that group known as Museum Junkies ~ Wherever I am, I look for museums. I have been very spoiled the past many years, with some of the best museums in the world at my doorstep..I still love wandering through any available museums on my trips.
I always shop in museum gift shops, I keep things and buy great gifts too, so as a Shopper, it is a pleasure to be able to do both at the same time .
I have not been forced by "peer pressure" to do anything that often since high school :)

I love Museums up to a point. When I first enter I am enthralled, enlightened then eventually overwhelmed. Sometime there is just toooo much to see, eg British Museum and the Louvre. As for shopping I do SERIOUS shopping at home in stores I know. But I have to agree with nytraveler's idea of picking up real estate books and apartment rentals. I love those things! We still have our Nice real estate books and I still look through them when I get the in the mood. Judy :-)

But isn't it nice to be home again and have that purchase from a shop in Paris/London/wherever to enjoy after the trip is over?
Since we almost always go to Europe in the fall, I wait until I am there to buy my fall/winter clothes, so I get to enjoy those things that are NOT like all the same mall stuff that everyone is wearing.
We have gone enough times that there is always time in a day or just as you are walking down the street and see something in a window, to shop, without devoting days to just shopping. I think living in a larger city enables one to be good at that :D

I'm the person who said that most people get talked, actually bullied is a better description, into going to art galleries and museums abroad when they would never do it at home.

I was only being facetious about shopping - it was a response to some snob who couldn't understand why someone would rather find something else to do besides shop. Personally, I spend little time shopping when I travel. I'm too busy eating, drinking and snooping around the local landscape looking for stuff that I don't see back home. I certainly wouldn't find that looking at a bunch of drab pictures in some art museum. I want art, I can go to "Deck The Halls" and buy a picture of four dogs playing poker.

Most people spend far too much time reading the guide books that invariably list museums and art galleries as among the starred attractions attractions. These people then travel abroad and then feel compelled to see them because they plan their trip with the goal of crossing of as many starred attractions as possible from their list. The many snobs who post on boards such as this reinforce the notion that you are a Philistine if you wouldn't rather spend your time looking at old pictures rather than investigating real life.

A perfect example is the Guggenheim museum in Venice. Everybook has it listed among the top attractions. It has nothing to do with Venice! Who would bother going all the way to Venice to see some modern art that they wouldn't cross the street to see at home?

The point of travelling is to have a good time. I, like everyone else, have my own notion of what that means. The culture Nazis just can't stand that, probably because deep inside they don't really believe that this culture stuff is so great, eirther. Inherent in every comment "I just luuuv museums" in the implication that "I am better than you." The snobs can deny it, but it comes through loud and clear. Otherwise, they would keep their traps shut and let people shop.

I can't imagine the world without museums to visit. Doesn't have to be painting or sculpture. Could just as easily be the Railroad Museum in York, the Racing Museums in Saratoga (NY) and Newmarket, the SS Great Britain in Bristol or the whaling museum in New Bedford (MA). All of these collections and celebrations can bring a lift to our lives and travels.

But so can wandering into the fish market in Venice, a lighting fixture shop in Lisbon, a lace store in Brugge, the Europa market in Notting Hill. My wife and I always like to look at the window display in the "knobs and knockers" shop on the way from the V&A to the S. Kensington tube. That's a hardware store for the uninitiated.

We can also sit and watch the insane traffic around the Arc de Triumphe or the kids in the playground in the Luxembourg Gardens.

Converse with the Director of the Botanical Gardens in Lisbon and with a very old man from Poland at the Kensington Palace reflecting pool wondering how he could get a copy of Dante's Inferno in Polish.

What wonderful things we can experience if our minds are open to them.

Platzer,
?Modern art that they wouldn?t cross the street to see at home?? Are you kidding? While I admit the edifice isn?t what we expect when we think ?Guggenheim?. After all, it?s just a simple building not the masterpieces of Frank Lloyd Wright or Frank Ghery like the Guggenheims in New York and Bilbao. But the Peggy Guggenheim Collection houses some of the most important works of our time. In a small way Peggy Guggenheim was to modern art what the Medici?s were to the Renaissance. Would we know the names of Brunelleschi and Donatello today if not for Cosimo Medici? Guggenheim was on the immediate scene of modern art and bought these works ?fresh off the presses? you might say. I?m not defending the Guggenheim just because my favorite Magritte (Empire of Light) hangs in the great room it?s just that the history of this museum is significant to the movement. Everything that happens to a place becomes a part of that place and for this reason I disagree with the statement, ?It has nothing to do with Venice!? Not all that is important in a city happened when Moses was in diapers. A city, a country, a culture is an ever evolving force and we need to respect all of it.
I did think it was somewhat funny when you said, ?The culture Nazis just can't stand that, probably because deep inside they don't really believe that this culture stuff is so great, eirther. Inherent in every comment "I just luuuv museums" in the implication that "I am better than you." The snobs can deny it, but it comes through loud and clear. Otherwise, they would keep their traps shut and let people shop?
But the truth is I do love museums, I love information and I love to read and write. I?m not sure what it means to be ?better than? someone else. I?ve met many people some with more money or more education then me but it doesn?t make them better then me. Only I get to determine that.
And if you wouldn?t cross the street to see Duchamp, Kandinsky, Klee, Pollock or any of the other 170 plus artists whose works hang from these walls, I say ?bravo? and to each their own. Like Mary Oliver said, ?you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.? It also means that while you are out shopping you won?t be obstructing the view of the great Mondrians for Giovanni, me and the other ?museum junkies? out there. I do thank you for your post because I might not have thought about these things tonight if not for you. Blessings.

sorry about the question marks in place of proper punctuation. I took this "out' to edit.

What does it matter? If you like museums, then do museums. If shopping is your thing, then do it. My wife and I both love art museums, museums, old churches, architecture of many kinds and the unusual -- one of my favorite visits in Paris was the sewers -- ok, so I am an engineer -- my wife and I both visited the famous department stores in Paris not only to shop but to see the famous stained glass domes.
Do your thing and do not worry what others will think.
Oh yes, we also did museums, zoos, etc. in DC, San Diego, LA , San Francisco, Boston and Philidelphia and wherever else we travel at home.
Mike

"I'm the person who said that most people get talked, actually bullied is a better description, into going to art galleries and museums abroad..."

Platzer

Me and my pal, 'Mugsy' would like to invite youse to a 'cultural' exhibit. Step in da car, kiddo, youse is gonna get 'educated'.

We're gonna park in the Piazzale Roma and then drag you to the Guggenheim. As in, Peggy. Now that dame, she knew how to have a good time! She threw lots of parties in that place, for everyone from Alec Guiness to Hedda Hopper to the Beatles. (She hadda lotta lovers, too!)

As to whether the house has got anythin' to do with Venice, I realize ol' Peg was only a come-from-away, but she did manage to live in Venice for more years than most of us wretches get to spend hours of daylight in that city. Yeah, she liked collectin' strange pictures. You gonna hold it against her? That was her house, man, where she lived. I wanna see that terrace, see that view, check out the grub in the café, case the joint to see how the place is laid out. And who knows, maybe the art'll grow on me. (Some of it might even leave with me, if ol' Mugsy has his way, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.)

Meanwhile, we're 'making' you go to her house, Platz.. You have read the guidebook, and you took way too long about it! So now you WILL follow it, or 'Mugsy' here will help you explore the bottom of the Grand Canal....

Enjoy. :)

I work in a museum, so if I visit too many museums or chateaux or historic houses on any one trip, it starts to feel like work. Highly enjoyable work, but I've never felt that way sitting in a cafe with a pichet of wine, watching whatever promenande presents itself .

I do love museums, though, and I love to shop, which is why I'm so grateful for museum shops. I also like to visit stores that were not designed with the tourist in mind--supermarkets, hardware stores, pet goods, etc. I have warm memories of finding a tiny mom & pop shoe store off the beaten track in Collioure and spending the better part of a morning talking to the proprietors and trying on shoes.

I loved the Peggy Guggenheim collection! I like museums that not only house art that most people have only seen in books--Picasso, Leger, Duchamp--but are also infused with the vision and idiosyncracies of a particular collector.

I think that people are more likely to visit their local museums for temporary exhibitions. Permanent collections seem to motivate tourists more than local residents. I live three blocks from the Philadelphia Museum of Art and but have visited just twice in the past year--once for the Degas exhibition and once we just popped in to see what was going on.

We missed the Schiaparelli exhibition, but learned that it will be in Paris when we are there. I feel like kicking myself for not seeing it when it was here so that I could compare the two venues.

Well Platzer - to each his own. But I do object to being called a "culture nazi" - as far as I know I'm not murdering anyone - or even forcing them into any museum if they don't want to go. If you hate art, architecture etc and just want to sit in a cafe - fine. But don't call me a culture Nazi - and I won't call you an ill-educated wino! (Not that I am of course - that would be very rude - but just to point out the inappropriateness of your language.)

I am torn about the use of the word "nazi" in other contexts, like "culture nazi" or "soup nazi".

If it was okay for the writers on Seinfeld, do I need to be more sensitive to the survivors of the Holocaust, and to all Jews, gypsies and related populations of people who suffered in World War II? Do I needto be careful about the use of the word "field", lest I show insensitivity over the deaths of the millions who died in the genocide of Pol Pot's "killing fields"? do we surrender certain words to terrible political and military "leaders" once they stain them?

Even more curious to me is that _nazi_ and _fascist_ have become such deplored words... when in fact _nationalism_ (nazionalismus) and _fascism_ (looking out for "our bundle"... our people, our nation) are in fact, very strong, and highly held political perspectives held by many "freedom" lovers around the world today... and throughout all of history?

How do you think the soup Nazi would have liked being called the soup Nazi? Would the customer have ever been served again? And in that context there was at least some element of coercion - even though I would argue that using Nazi in that context does in some sense deman the lives of all those people murdered by the real Nazis. (I admit I do sometimes call people fascisti - but it is always in a political context - and I always do mean to compare them to ultra-rightist, violent political groups).