How do you get the most from an art gallery visit?

[AllaMova]

I’m calling on help from artists, art teachers and experienced art gallery attendees etc. here.

How do you get the most out of your art gallery visits?

Do you ask yourself certain questions about each piece? Or similar?

I enjoy going to galleries, but it’s very new to me. I love admiring at the art pieces and looking at the brush strokes, but I feel like I could get more out of my visits.

I have a number of approaches:

• is there a kids guide? - these are often short synopsis of the artist and subject. Sometimes will point out bits i don't see
• is there any audio guide - don't feel you have to listen to it all (again kids version is often good!)
• is there someone in the gallery explaining to their companion - follow them around- try not to be a stalker!!
• go with an art teacher friend - she explains on the train what we will see. I give her the time to take as long as she wants in the gallery with no rushing (she stops to draw etc)
• google before going.
• I do like reading the blurb in the rooms

Sometimes I Go with no homework done - like the recent exhibitions in the Haywood Gallery - threads of life and an amazing city's in a suitcase (not sure of the name) - then it was just a look around to see what interested me. I loved them both - can't tell you anything intellectual about them but that they were great.

I like going alone and have no specific schedule to stick to so there is no rushing. You may want to return to a specific work. A city near me has in its local museum one major work of art, it just happens to be one of my favourites. It’s a free museum and I have gone in many times just to see it.

I go to museums, galleries and attractions before they open as quieter so am in the queue.Seeing the Bayeux Tapestry years ago is a good example, first in the queue was quiet, by the time we left it was crowded.

If you're going to one of the big galleries, try to pick a less popular time, and avoid school holidays if you can. The National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery can get very busy.

Don't try to do too much in one visit. At the National Gallery, for example, decide that on one visit you'll just focus on the Impressionists, or on the English painters - Gainsborough, Constable, Turner. In fact you could devote several visits to each of those.

Look at a painting close up and from further away.

It's ok to decide you don't like a particular style or genre of painting.

There used to be National Gallery curator talks on YouTube. I don't know if they are still there.

Some years ago David Dimbleby did a six part series for the BBC on British artists, particularly landscape painters - A Picture of Britain. That is on YouTube.

@AllaMova Some galleries have talks and take you to see various works. We look at info on line about exhibitions and if you become a member you get insight evenings etc.

I came on to say 'buy a pencil', but having read these posts, I'm leaving with wonderful ideas myself!

At the National Portrait gallery as a kid, I used to go to the gift shop and buy some postcards of some of the paintings, then spend my time in the gallery looking for each one that was pictured on the post card.

I set an agenda of some kind - all works in a particular style, or on a particular topic, or some other feature - before I go. I never try to look at everything - you get cultural indigestion if you do that. I spend some time in front of each artwork just looking - no questions, ideas or thoughts, just seeing how the art speaks to me (or not). I may then look more closely at details, read the information panel, perhaps check out the artist or work on my phone. If there’s a bench or seat near the work, I may sit on it looking for half an hour or so. I do something similar when sightseeing on holiday (Rome was all I could find by Bernini and Caravaggio and film locations of Gregory Peck films). But if something catches my eye as I’m walking past to follow my agenda, I stop and take a closer look.

if it’s a small gallery or a particular exhibition, I walk round and take a quick look first to get an overview, and then go round again and focus on the works that stood out for me. In both galleries and exhibitions, it’s rarely the famous works that I really get something out of.

I don’t think there’s a right way to do it, but I like to do it, fast and then slow. So I’ll have an aimless wander, taking as much as I can in, but not even trying to take it all in. Then I’ll go for a cup of tea and a sit down. Then I’ll go back to the bits that I was most interested in, and spend longer really taking in those particular rooms.