Museum experience over spring break

I spent my spring break touring Italy with my sister. While we had many adventures and witnessed strange encounters with fellow tourists, the most memorable was at The Academia Gallery in Florence, Italy. Upon arrival our first stop was The David by Michelangelo and as we admired the work of the sixteenth century artists we couldn’t help notice a group of Asian tourists. One of them in particular, I shall call “the rebel” was pacing the around the magnificent sculpture. Undoubtedly I noticed this fellow tourist by his intense interest and I certainly couldn’t miss the oversized backpack and large camera because he kept cutting me off. After admiring and pondering the David my sister and I exited toward the plaster casts by Lorenzo Bartolini and Luigi Pampaloni and on our way out we heard a woman shouting. The woman was a museum security worker yelling (in Italian) at the rebel. He had taken a picture of The David when there were clear signs “no photography”. She took his camera, turned it off, and gave it back to him. Looking confused he grabbed it and proceeded to walk in our direction. After walking a few feet he turned the camera back on. The security woman briskly walked up to him again spoke in Italian and turned his camera off. I shamelessly found this quite amusing until the rebel followed my sister and me into the next gallery. This is where then I started to feel like a criminal since the security guard followed the rebel and she then watched all visitors like a hawk.

After spring break when visiting Brighton, England with my fellow study abroad mates we encountered a similar experience to that at the British Museum. Through our privilege of having Britt as our tour guide, she set up a tour of the Royal Pavilion. About 15 minutes into the tour we reached the royal kitchen. In here our tour guide explained cooking in the seventeenth century. This is where I first noticed the Wisconsin imposters. Interestingly these imposters were not even close to our scholarly age of twenty, they were a middle aged married couple. Indeed they even tried to pretend like they were not listening into our guided tour. They had bought the hand held audio guide and occasionally held it up to their ear but clearly were listening to the tiny lady in the black dress that was our tour guide. I glared at them but even the dirtiest looks didn’t phase them or they didn’t even notice me. I admire Steven Driscoll Hixson for his courage to confront the imposter at the British Museum because I most certainly could not face these elders. Thankfully when we got to the music room the guide kindly suggested those with audio guides go to another area within this particular room. Another victory against Wisconsin imposters. Wisconsin scholars-2, Wisconsin imposters-0!