Drawing from experience: The British museum

I have been visiting museums ever since childhood and now I make sure to take all of my friends and family to them when and where I can. Most notably, I love going to the British Museum and drawing. The never ending galleries and the vast expanses of artefacts are all I could ever dream of. Being a Classics student, my boasting is almost endless – I’m a bona fide tour guide.

So I am understandably peeved when I go to view my favourite exhibits and must strain to see them over the crowds of camera-clad tourists. On a recent visit to the British Museum, I tried to stop by at the Rosetta stone and analyse the engravings. Disappointingly my tour group and I couldn’t get within five metres of the stone.

It made me recall an article which detailed Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum and its choice to stop allowing photography for one weekend. Rather, it provided postcards to visitors on entry and asked them to draw what they saw instead of taking the usual photographs. As I stood, trying to peer through the barricade between the Rosetta stone and myself, this decision began to make a lot of sense.

Taking a quick picture has its benefits, but the physical act of drawing a copy of a painting, sculpture or artefact may be far more rewarding

In the modern world, it’s easy to take a picture. Phones now have the ability to take excellent quality photos, visitors can carry cameras in their back pockets and the need to get film developed is obsolete. However, with this new found access to photography, have we lost our ability to appreciate art?

Taking a quick picture has its benefits, but the physical act of drawing a copy of a painting, sculpture or artefact may be far more rewarding. In sketching out the lines, coping the shading and recreating the original form, we can better understand the intention of the artist and notice the small but significant intricacies of both art and artefact.

I would never suggest that the advance in accessible photography is a negative thing as photography is its own art form entirely. However, maybe next time you’re in a museum or gallery leave the camera at home and really look at the exhibits right then and there. You might gain an appreciation you’ve never even had before.