Personality

I have to admit, I'm not the best gallery-guard ever.

When an elderly person is leaning on a wall, or taking a photo of her grandchild in front of their favorite work of art, I tend to look away...

However certain things are unquestionably unacceptable. 1) No learning on Peggy's very fragile dining room table. 2) No touching the art! (You might think that's a 'duh,' but people nearly do it all the time.) 3) No sitting on the window frames - though I'm probably adamant about that because of the jealousy factor; after all, I don't want to watch you sit, while I'm on my feet guarding!

With that said, it's very interesting to watch peoples' reactions when they are told not to touch, or do, something. Half the people stop whatever it is they are doing as soon as they see the guard coming over, and sometimes even walk away from the area in which they were doing whatever it was that they weren't supposed to be doing. A quarter of the people say "I'm so sorry" nearly 1,000 times; honestly, you don't need to be over apologetic, I guarantee whatever you were doing is not that big of a deal. And the last quarter of the people take the denial route and say, "I wasn't doing that."

However, the other day I had an experience that didn't quite fall into any of these categories. A man was pointing to a Picasso while leaning against Peggy's table and I walked over and said "Please don't touch --"

Before I could finish my sentence harshly responded, "I didn't touch..." so loudly that other people in the gallery turned to see what was happening.

When he stopped his yelling I finished my sentence, "the table."

"Oh," he responded and walked away.

Interesting how even this small interactions speak volumes about our personalities.

So, what type of museum visitor are you? And perhaps more importantly, how much weight should we place on first impressions?

Sigh... Just a day in the life of a PGC intern...