Museums should open with one beautiful unlabeled object

Evidence

If I were arranging a museum, whether of minerals or other things, I think I should have the visitor see, as he enters, one beautiful, unlabeled thing. If it is surpassingly lovely of its own sort, it is of no consequence, at the moment, what its specific name may be. Anyone who wishes to know later will be informed. I would have ample space around it, so that nothing could jostle for supremacy. I am not a museum expert, and if it were left to me to create a whole museum, I fear I should make sad work of it. But I do feel sure that I am right about establishing the mood and the stance. — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 524

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Fitness, not visual pleasantness, is the root of beauty — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 517; Labeling things beautiful destroys their perceived beauty — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 506; Catalogs and guidebooks manufactured the separation of visitor from exhibit (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Catalogs and guidebooks manufactured the separation of visitor from exhibit #complicates (0.78)
• A major museum mounted a show attacking the idea of museumized art #expands (0.75) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1603
• The Responsive Eye show turned museum viewing into a participatory physical spectacle #complicates (0.72) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 696