THE VATICAN MUSEUMS
And How It Is Just Like A Beatles Concert
by armen pandola
Michelangelo, Raphael, Greek sculpture, Egyptian treasures - it’s one of the greatest museums in the world. And one of the worst.
The Vatican Museum (VM) is a mess. Visiting there, I was reminded of a concert I went to more than 50 years ago - it was the height of the Beatles fame and I had tickets to see them live. Sadly, the concert was dominated by thousands of so-called fans whose only purpose in being there was to scream and shout the names of their favorite Beatle - just behind me sat a group that screamed, ‘Ringo! Ringo!’ in my ears for an hour. Because of the frenzy of these fans, the Beatles had to perform a half a football field away, behind a barbed-wire fence. Their music was lost in the mayhem.
It was a terrible experience for me - and for the Beatles, themselves. Everywhere they tried to perform live, they couldn’t even hear themselves. They decided to abandon live concerts and to concentrate on making music in the studio. The change gave the world the great albums of their later years.
In the VM, the fans of art are just as disruptive as they were all that time ago at a Beatles’ concert.
Hundreds of groups of people from all countries across the globe are herded through the VM with their tour guides shouting instructions and ‘explanations’ in a towering babel of art and hsitory . The guides all have long sticks with little pom poms or flags stuck on the end so people can see them over the heads of the herds. Individuals have their cell phones on the same long sticks to record their entire visit. Nowhere is there a sanctuary from the noise and the shoving and the mayhem. The magnificent paintings, sculptures, frescos and treasures fly by in a Dantesque swirl of art museum hell.
The worst place is the Sistine Chapel. People are herded in and out like convicts. Guards shouting at those clueless visitors who insist on taking pictures and video even after it is drummed into your brain by signs and warnings that no photos or videos are allowed in the Chapel. I stood looking up in wonder for about 10 seconds before a guard pushed me to move to the center of the room and from there I was pushed to the far end of the room and out the door. I was in the Chapel for less than two minutes.
The VM is poorly organized. Its three floors are not divided in any meaningful way. Yes, there are sections for Greek (pagan they call it), Egyptian and Western art but much of it is just scattered about a room. If you get the audio guide ( and you should since it is the only way to make any sense at all of the place) there is a heavy emphasis on preaching the Word - propaganda is what it is.
The VM has almost six million visitors a year generating over $85 million of revenue with a net profit of about half that amount, so it is a hugely successful business, but at what cost? The 25,000+ visitors a day do untold damage to the art. More than that, they make it impossible to enjoy the art.
The solution is simple - limit the number of visitors, especially groups. The number of days that groups can visit should be changed to M-W-F or to mornings only. Reorganize the museum to make it more user friendly.
De-emphasize the religious commentary on the art. All those paintings about Mary, the mother of Christ, have little to do with her as a real person and more as the eternal Mother, the goddess of fertility and maternal instincts that have been worshiped since Gaia. None of these paintings - or those of Christ - even pretend to portray these figures in their ‘real’ setting, that is, as people who lived in Palestine in the 30 A.D. All are portrayed as living in the time the artist painted them, from the 12the century onward. They are not about religion but about people, humans and their hopes and fears and doubts, their joys and sorrows and dreams that life can be better, that it can lead somewhere other than death.
The VM does have one place that gives me hope - its magnificent collection of modern art. On the way from the incredible paintings of Raphael and others in the papal apartments to the Sistine Chapel is a museum-sized collection of modern art with religious themes. Matisse, Klee, Dali, Piccasso, Van Gogh, Gaugain and many others. These are paintings rarely reproduced anywhere and so are new to most visitors. And yet, because of where they are, the hordes of visitors, including the groups, just pass them by. So, you have these rooms all to yourself. They are the only rooms that you will have the opportunity to study the great art that is housed in the VM. Take advantage of it.
So, what can a poor tourist do but try to find a few places to stand and wonder at the incredible power of art - a power that resonates through the centuries, through the chaos of history to speak to us, here and now. Try to do that - pick ten or twenty treasures to contemplate and as Dante wrote, ‘Stand firm as the tower that never shakes its top whatever wind may blow.’