How to Make Every Museum Fun! | All The Hacks Podcast Clip
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Obviously people can go take a museum hack tour,
00:00:07.380 | which is still running as a business,
00:00:09.180 | but I'm so fascinated as someone who,
00:00:13.540 | I don't know if I could tell,
00:00:16.060 | if someone asked me the question,
00:00:17.260 | how do you do a museum?
00:00:18.700 | I don't feel like I would have the answer you would,
00:00:20.820 | and I feel like you have a better answer.
00:00:22.660 | - Yeah, I'll tell your listeners exactly
00:00:24.100 | how to visit a museum.
00:00:25.100 | And there in San Francisco,
00:00:26.140 | have you been to the Legion of Honor?
00:00:27.740 | - I have.
00:00:28.560 | - Yeah, it's a nice museum, right?
00:00:29.620 | That one and the DeYoung are two really nice museums there.
00:00:32.660 | So here's how to visit.
00:00:34.860 | Here's exactly from all my time.
00:00:36.660 | And I've been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art
00:00:38.180 | more than a thousand times,
00:00:39.700 | and I've been to many other museums.
00:00:41.540 | Here is how you should go about experiencing a museum
00:00:46.240 | for the first time.
00:00:47.080 | So you're going to a new museum.
00:00:48.740 | - Any museum or is it specific categories
00:00:51.700 | work better than others for this?
00:00:53.660 | - This applies to any museum.
00:00:55.660 | Museum hack, in my opinion, works best for art museums.
00:01:00.020 | But the thing, the hack, the special sauce
00:01:03.260 | I'm about to tell you,
00:01:04.180 | the way to approach works for any museum.
00:01:07.500 | And here's what you're going to do.
00:01:08.980 | As soon as you get there,
00:01:10.380 | you're going to go in right where you buy your ticket,
00:01:12.700 | you'll get a map,
00:01:13.940 | and you are going to walk the entire floor plan,
00:01:17.540 | and you're not going to stop.
00:01:20.040 | You're not going to stop and look at,
00:01:22.060 | I don't care if you love it, you're not going to stop.
00:01:24.180 | You can circle it on the map and you'll come back later,
00:01:26.600 | but you're not going to stop.
00:01:28.380 | You're going to walk the entire floor plan
00:01:31.380 | to build a mental map of the space
00:01:34.280 | and to know where you want to go back to later.
00:01:37.360 | So first, you'll walk the entire floor plan.
00:01:40.600 | It could take you between five and 45 minutes,
00:01:43.280 | depending on how big it is.
00:01:45.260 | You will then go to the museum cafe.
00:01:47.640 | Almost all museums have a cafe.
00:01:50.180 | If they don't have a cafe, you can just sit down
00:01:52.240 | and you're going to take a little break.
00:01:54.040 | I like to go there and I like to get a cup of coffee.
00:01:56.900 | You can get a glass of wine if you want,
00:01:58.980 | and you get a little snack.
00:01:59.960 | You're going to replenish your glycogen
00:02:03.540 | or your glucose or whatever.
00:02:04.880 | You're just going to have some carbs maybe, some sugar,
00:02:07.860 | to build up your energy store, to go back.
00:02:11.120 | Now that you've seen everything briefly,
00:02:14.020 | you will now go back and look closer
00:02:16.380 | at the things that captured your mind and interest.
00:02:18.620 | What happens to many people while we do this is,
00:02:21.060 | have you ever done this?
00:02:21.900 | You go to a new museum and you spend like the first hour
00:02:26.520 | looking at the stuff that you happen to just walk,
00:02:29.940 | like you waste all of your cognitive load
00:02:34.040 | and looking energy on things
00:02:37.480 | that you don't even want to look at.
00:02:38.680 | Because the best stuff sometimes is at the very end.
00:02:41.320 | The stuff that you're most excited about.
00:02:43.240 | And by the time you get to that stuff,
00:02:44.520 | you're tired and you're exhausted.
00:02:46.040 | So the way to do it is to walk through
00:02:48.000 | the entire floor plan.
00:02:49.000 | Do not stop at anything.
00:02:50.400 | Circle things on the map.
00:02:51.720 | Go to the cafe, take a break,
00:02:53.460 | and then go back and look closer and deeper
00:02:56.420 | at the things you're curious about.
00:02:58.780 | - And how long does that usually take?
00:03:00.340 | Would you say for,
00:03:01.180 | I know there are museums of different sizes,
00:03:03.140 | but how long would you tell someone to budget
00:03:04.980 | for a trip to a museum?
00:03:06.300 | - I personally can't spend more than two hours.
00:03:08.580 | I think that this was one of the biggest things
00:03:10.880 | that I changed a lot of my friends thinking about,
00:03:13.800 | is that you don't have to go try to get
00:03:16.200 | every single dollar's worth
00:03:18.060 | and stay there as long as possible.
00:03:20.260 | I can spend about two hours at a museum
00:03:22.100 | before I get tired.
00:03:23.420 | This is a real thing, getting tired at a museum.
00:03:25.960 | It's called gallery fatigue.
00:03:28.520 | It happens because we're not in an activated space.
00:03:32.040 | We're quiet, we're thinking.
00:03:34.080 | We don't know how we're supposed to act.
00:03:35.520 | It can be stressful sometimes.
00:03:37.400 | So I spend about two hours total.
00:03:40.360 | - So about half that time is a run through and a cafe.
00:03:44.200 | And then the other half is actually kind of
00:03:46.240 | spending time in the things you're interested in.
00:03:48.400 | - Yes, yes, yes.
00:03:49.240 | Sometimes if I go to a museum for two hours,
00:03:51.120 | I'll spend an hour in the cafe
00:03:53.840 | because I just wanna go approach it with a strategy.
00:03:58.320 | And many times we don't have a strategy
00:03:59.980 | when we go into a new physical space like a museum.
00:04:02.400 | We're just walking where our body takes us
00:04:04.960 | and we're looking.
00:04:06.280 | And before we know it, we've wasted an hour and we're tired
00:04:09.200 | and we didn't even get to go see the really cool stuff
00:04:11.960 | that's on the second floor back in the modern wing.
00:04:14.360 | - And could you do that from the map at home
00:04:16.960 | or do you need to be there?
00:04:18.500 | - I think you need to be there because you need to walk it.
00:04:21.140 | You need to physically get in your body
00:04:23.560 | and see the stuff firsthand.
00:04:25.800 | And also there's not gonna be,
00:04:27.220 | the museum's not gonna feature like all,
00:04:29.680 | like you may be interested, like for example,
00:04:32.080 | I love at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
00:04:33.840 | there's this sofa.
00:04:35.640 | It's like a green, beautiful green sofa.
00:04:39.160 | It's not gonna be on any of the museum website
00:04:41.680 | or featured top galleries.
00:04:43.700 | I don't know why I like it,
00:04:44.840 | but it was owned by the King of Spain or something.
00:04:47.480 | And I love that thing, and you're not gonna find that
00:04:49.720 | when you do the museum's website tour of the galleries.