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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. I'm really grateful that you're here. On today's show, actors Michael Urie and Grantham Coleman will be here to talk about starring in the new production of Richard II. We'll mark the 25th anniversary of Erykah Badu's classic album Mama's Gun with musician Jane Poyser, who produced the album. Yes, you may know him as a member of the band The Roots. Plus, we'll continue our coverage of the documentary film festival, DOC NYC, with filmmaker Ernie Bustamante. He joins us to talk about street-smart lessons from a TV icon. He is talking about Maria.

That's the plan. Let's get this started with a debate about taking pictures in museums.

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Alison Stewart: You've probably heard the idea of the Instagramable museum, places that encourage the use of smartphones to take pictures so you can upload them to social media and encourage other people to visit, places that are sometimes maybe more experienced than traditional museum. Then, on the opposite end of the spectrum, you have places like The Frick Collection, which reopens this year with its long-standing prohibition on pictures.

Will Pavia is the New York correspondent for The Times, and he wrote an article called Inside the New York Gallery that Bans Photography. He joins me now for another installment of our Small Stakes, Big Opinion series, Museum Photo Bans: Yay or nay? It is nice to meet you, Will.

Will Pavia: You too, Alison.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we would like you to weigh in here. Are you for, or are you against museum photography? Are you for it, or are you against it? Have you been to the Frick or any other exhibit that didn't allow photography? How did it change your experience? Should it be allowed, or should it be banned? Our phone number is 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can call in and join Will and I on the air, or you can text to us at that number as well. How does the Frick explain their policy of banning photography?

Will Pavia: Well, they do it on signs as you walk in. No phones, no photographs. There are also people stationed, a bit like bouncers, all over the place who will jump in if they see you taking pictures, and they'll call you out. I think in their case, they allowed photography very briefly in 2014 for a few weeks. They decided it was a disaster. People were backing into each other in corridors. The Frick's a former house, a former mansion. It's quite narrow. There's not a lot of space for people to stand back and take a good selfie. That's what they do. They said, "Well, this isn't working for us," and so they banned it.

Alison Stewart: How unique is the Frick's policy?

Will Pavia: Well, we thought it was very unique, and we thought it was interesting to go there because it felt like you were going back to a time before there were cell phones when you walked around an art museum and you just looked at the art and you didn't take pictures of it or you didn't take pictures of yourself with the art. Other museums allow it, and some of them engage with it. I remember there was an exhibition of Andy Warhol at the Whitne, which almost was geared for mobile phones. It had very bright backgrounds, and it was made for people to go and take selfies. I think they even had a selfie room. Warhol is an artist who very much would be engaged with that kind of thing.

Alison Stewart: This text says, "No photos. Engage with the art." You interviewed people at the Frick. What did they tell you?

Will Pavia: A lot of them said, I suppose predictably, that they thought this was good and that they were communing with the art. I did catch the odd person taking a photograph.

Alison Stewart: You did?

[laughter]

Will Pavia: I felt like an undercover police officer. I was a bit wary of almost confronting them because I was worried that I would look like the police. I remember watching this lady kind of glide past, I think it was a Renoir, and she kind of shot from the hip, almost like a drive-by kind of thing. Most people at the Frick obeyed the rules, and they would talk about-- almost being like in church and communing with the art. This was the way it ought to be seen.

Alison Stewart: Did you talk to the people who did sneak a photo here or there?

Will Pavia: I got one. Yes, I did. I also went to MoMA straight afterwards to catch people there taking pictures of the art. There, I thought some people were a little bit gingerish about talking about it, but a lot of people said, "No, it's an elitist thing to ban photography." There are some smaller museums that really need people taking pictures of the art and putting it on Instagram. It's free advertising. You don't need that if you're the Frick or MoMA.

It was very much divided opinion, and some people really liked-- One lady described it to me as the mosh pit in front of a Van Gogh. She said, "I wanted to mosh. You want to get to the front." She very proudly showed me a picture of-- It was her taking a picture of someone in front of her, taking a picture of someone in front of them, taking a picture. You could see a starry night through three cell phones.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's actually kind of artistic when you think about it.

Will Pavia: Yes. It was like a little work of art in itself. I was quite impressed. I must admit, in order to report the story, I surreptitiously took pictures of people taking pictures, and I wandered around with my phone filming them. I felt slightly like I was going to get pulled up at any moment by the museum. Of course, at MoMA, they don't do that.

Alison Stewart: How did the camera ban at the Frick, how did it affect your personal experience?

Will Pavia: Interesting. I think whenever we go into museums, or certainly whenever I go into museums, I'm not an art expert. When I go in, I'm always slightly wondering, "Am I doing this right? Am I engaging properly with the art?" I suppose at the Frick, you have to put your phone away and so no one texts you, and you just look at the paintings. The other thing about the Frick is they don't have those little placards that tell you what it is. You stand there looking at it once or twice. Someone said, "Oh, no, that's actually a Rembrandt." I found it very interesting. You do look at pictures straight off without wondering-

Alison Stewart: Interesting.

Will Pavia: -how this might look on your Instagram feed, or whether you should take this down on your phone. I think it is a very pure experience in that respect.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Will Pavia. Am I saying your last name right? Will Pavia from The New York Times. We're talking about photo bans in museums, and we're taking your calls. It's a Small Stakes, Big Opinions episode of our series. Let's take a couple of calls. Let's talk to Don. Hi, Don. Thanks for calling in from Brooklyn. You're on the air.

Don: Hi. Yes, I think there's a couple issues going on. The first is that I think people do actually have a hard time living in the moment. Then the other is that I think that people want to take ownership of those moments so they can share it with other people, either through social media or just showing somebody on their phone what they have seen.

I'm a musician. I went to see a concert at the Brooklyn Conservatory the other day. It was an outdoor concert, a big event, very interesting. I could not see the band because people were in front of the ensemble that was on the street with their phones taking pictures. To me, it seems kind of sad. It's great that they're sharing the event, but it's not great that they're not taking it in as much as they could.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling. Let's talk to Jack, who is calling in from Princeton, New Jersey. Hi, Jack, thanks for making the time to call All Of It.

Jack: Oh, thank you for taking my call. This is a great topic to discuss. I'm 63 years old, so I'm an old man that just never took pictures at museums. I worked at MoMA back in the '90s, and people weren't really into taking photos. I've been to every major museum from Philly to New York up to Boston, and I just think, with today, that it just takes away from the ambiance of enjoying the Frick Museum. I've been there many times. Going to Frick without thinking of a photo, you're thinking of this beautiful architecture and the work.

Same with other museums. When I go into MoMA, I'm not thinking about, "Oh, let me get my camera." I was there. I saw them hang Van Gogh's portrait of a sailor. I was there for when they got that in, they hung it. I wasn't thinking about taking a picture.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: I'm sure not. This is an interesting text that says, "Sometimes I take pictures of pieces that I like to delve into later, either the actual particular piece or the artist. It's almost like bookmarking." That's an interesting point.

Will Pavia: Yes. I think we use phones now as diaries and so we like to go back and look. There was a study done, I think, about 10 years ago where they looked at how people took pictures of artwork and tried to work out whether they remembered it more if they took a picture of it. They remembered it less if they took a picture of it, but if they zoomed in on an element of the picture, they remembered it more. I suppose, in the sense of this person texting in, they were trying to focus on something in particular that moved them. Perhaps that made the art stand more with them than it would have done.

Alison Stewart: The New York Times reported on a series of museum accidents over the summer that were caused by selfie attempts.

Will Pavia: [laughs]

Alison Stewart: One guy in Florence tried to pose in front of a Medici and he bumped into it. When you think about photo bans, are they there to protect the artwork?

Will Pavia: Oh, yes, good question. I suppose if you are in a museum with lots of room, then I guess you can have people taking selfies. If you go to the Louvre, there's lots of room in front of the Mona Lisa, and it's like you're at the Met gala and she's Kim Kardashian. Everyone is like snapping away at her. I don't know if we see the painting differently. We look at it differently. It's more of a scene. Certainly, at the Frick, I think it's for your own protection, possibly that we don't have people waving around selfie sticks.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Max in Brooklyn. Hi, Max. You're on the air.

Max: Hey, thanks so much. Appreciate your coverage. Been to museums with photo bans and without. I'm fine either way. When you talk about communing with the art, I do have a bit of an issue when people treat museums like their churches and, therefore, they need to be church mouse quiet. When I'm in a museum, I like to talk to the people I'm with about the art. I think it's good to have discussions. That's part of the experience. I feel like some people think silence is mandatory in a museum. I know it's not photography, but where's your experience? Where do you come down on that? How do you feel?

Alison Stewart: What do you think, Will?

Will Pavia: I think that's very interesting. There's a Donna Tartt book, The Goldfinch. Towards the end of it, a character says something like, "Art is not legit. Art is like a whistle down a dark alley that kind of draws you in." I think there's something about that and engaging with the art and reacting to it. Some people now, because phones are such a big part of how we react to things, I suppose, react with a phone. Some of what art does is the same thing that someone does when they put something on Instagram that goes viral. It's something that's eye catching, that draws you in. Yes, I do feel a certain sympathy with that idea.

Alison Stewart: This text says, "Absolutely for the ban. Let's paid skilled photographers to do it while no one is there. Stop ruining everyone's experience with your blurry, terribly exposed pictures and selfies." This one says, "I was at the Frick and surprised by no photos. The guard did tell me that you could use their website and use their QR code to get more info about the art. How they determine what you're doing with your phone is complicated."

Will Pavia: Interesting. One of the readers underneath the piece that I wrote over the summer-- I should say I work for The Times of London, not The New York Times. Anyway, they said, "Why doesn't a museum, as part of your entry fee, give you six postcards of your choice at the end so you don't have to take pictures of those things?"

Alison Stewart: One of the people you spoke with argued that allowing photography can be a form of advertising or advocacy for the museum. How did she explain that idea?

Will Pavia: Yes, I think that was a French teacher who'd come from Ohio. We were at MoMA, and I was talking to her, and she said, "It's all right for MoMA. If they wanted to ban cell phones, people would still come." If you are a museum in Dayton, Ohio, it's really helpful if people are going around taking pictures of themselves with the artwork and saying, "This is a great place, everyone should come here." It does function, I think, for smaller museums, especially as a way of advertising what they have.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Will Pavia, New York correspondent for The Times. We are having a Small Stakes, Big Opinion segment. We're talking about photo bans in museum, and we are taking your calls. Are you for them? Are you against them? Tell us why. Our number is 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Let's talk to Sarah who is calling in from the Bronx. Hi Sarah, thanks for making the time to call All Of It.

Sarah: Okay, I will try to be succinct, which is not my forte. I love taking pictures because I have orchestrated vast storage of paintings, sculptures, textiles, et cetera. I'm not going to buy a $75 book all the time to be able to look at pictures again or things that I think are so incredible. The idea of posting, I knew when Facebook came out and Instagram came out, that I didn't want to be part of it. That has nothing to do with my taking pictures.

I think it is wonderful to be able to-- It's like owning a book. You can go back and look at it and enjoy it and have a real deeper appreciation. I do some art, so I can also use it as a resource. Many books don't have the pieces that I love in them, so it's inaccessible once the show disappears. That's as brief as I think I can be.

Alison Stewart: You did well. Thank you so much, Sarah, for calling in. Let's talk to Harris from Brooklyn. Hi, Harris. Thanks for calling in. Harris is listening. Harris is listening. He's going to find out that we're talking to him. He's in Brooklyn. Hi, Harris.

Eric: Hi, it's Eric, not Harris.

Alison Stewart: Oh, sorry, Eric. Eric, go for it.

Eric: It's Eric. Hi. I'm a professor, and I take students to look at the artwork, to study the artwork. It helps them when they can take a picture of things. It helps them remember what they're looking at. They have something to defer to at home or when they're studying or for a project. There's an argument that it enhances their experience in the museum. I certainly understand the whole concept of, in small spaces, it may endanger the art. That's real, and that has to be discussed. Overall, as a educator, I would only support students taking pictures to study the work afterwards, to use it for projects, to defer to it when they need to and to appreciate it when they want to see it again.

Alison Stewart: Eric, thank you so much for calling in. Let's go to Jeff in Astoria. Hi, Jeff. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Jeff: Sure. Hi. Good afternoon to the both of you. Perhaps an interesting perspective in that I was fortunate enough to be in the Prado about one, two weeks ago. They have the singular largest collection of Hieronymus Bosch paintings, including The Garden of Earthly Delights. If you know anything about Bosch, and particularly that painting, the beauty of it really is in the details. The details are incredibly small and very hard to see, even though it's a very large piece of work.

I would have found, having been able to take a photo, which I was not allowed to do, to be very beneficial to myself, so I could have zoomed in and seeing all the little creatures or characters that Bosch put into the painting. To be fair to the Prado, they did have their own video monitor that worked you through the piece and did highlight some of those elements in it. Again, it was their selection, their piece versus my ability to take in the whole picture and zoom in, zoom out, and see the details that I wanted.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for your comment. Did you want to respond to anybody who called in?

Will Pavia: I think the interesting thing, actually, with all of them is that it made me wonder if the people who do take pictures, specifically of details of paintings, might have an artistic bent themselves in a sense. I interviewed Keith McNally recently, the restaurateur, and he was talking about how he designed all his restaurants. Very often, it was something he'd seen in an art museum. He'd seen like a tile or he'd seen a bit of sculpture, and he thought, "Actually, I want to build an entire restaurant around that theme."

I don't know. I suppose you could argue that if you were an artist going to museums, great artists steal and all that, then you might want to take pictures of specific details that you want to come back to.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about photo bans in museums and taking your calls. It's our Small Stake, Big Opinions. My guest is Will Pavia from The Times, who recently wrote about The Fricks Collection banning all photography. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All Of It.

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Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest in studio is Will Pavia. He's a New York correspondent for The Times. We're talking about photo bans in museums, and we're taking your calls. It's a Small Stakes, Big Opinion. My guest is Will Pavia, and he wrote about The Fricks Collection, their ban on taking pictures.

It's interesting because of what I do. I take a lot of pictures in museums. I go to museums all the time. I'm a lot like what the college have said. I go take small images I see in a big picture, or I take them from memory so that I can write a question about them. I think I took pictures at the Frick before they were open.

Will Pavia: [laughs] Oh, no.

Alison Stewart: I know, I know. It was just a few of us. I find it very helpful. I will say, when I go to see an exhibit because I want to go see it on my free time, I'm really frustrated by the people taking pictures. It's an interesting dilemma.

Will Pavia: I'm very familiar with this. I do the same, especially when I'm doing it for work, if I'm covering something, and I'll take pictures of all the little placards because it's like, "Oh, the research is right here." Then I'll forget which placard is for which. Then I'll take more pictures. If you go to an art museum, do you then go back and look at the pictures on your phone, do you think?

Alison Stewart: Oh, definitely. Oh, definitely. I just did the Wilfredo Lam, and I took a ton of pictures because the jungle is so huge, and I needed to look at parts of it to talk about it.

Will Pavia: [laughs] Yes. I went to the Vatican when I was 16. I think I had a little point-and-shoot camera. I was with my sister, and we had tremendous arguments about what we should take pictures of and what we thought was absolutely vital to record. I don't think I've ever looked at any of those photos. Well, maybe once.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: This is a good text. It says, "It's the selfies that are the problem-

Will Pavia: Ah, yes.

Alison Stewart: -rather than--" Is there a difference between a selfie and taking a picture?

Will Pavia: Yes, I think there is. When I was at the MoMA, lots of people, just taking pictures of a starry night, but then occasionally, someone would come forward and stand in front of the crowd and either have their picture taken or take their own picture in front of it, and them pointing at it in the way that you now do on social media. I suppose they were doing it for the gram rather than for themselves, maybe.

Alison Stewart: Yes, probably. Let's talk to Cheryl. Cheryl is in the business. Cheryl, thank you for calling All Of It.

Cheryl: Hi there. How are you? A big fan. Yes, I'm Cheryl. I was head of marketing for the Museum of the City of New York for quite a while. It's funny, as both a museum goer and as a marketer, I think you could be on both sides of the table. What I will say, I actually think it creates a better visitor experience. Prohibiting photography, I think it creates an opportunity for the visitor to be more present to the content, which I think, all in all, creates a better overall experience at the institution.

I think that also creates a little FOMO and drives more word of mouth. Meaning you'll have experience in a museum or an exhibition, and you'll share that verbally with a friend, and you'll talk about that. I think that's the New York way, if you will, because we always want something we can't have, and you want to go and experience it yourself. I think it creates more demand for the institution.

I was just in Japan. I was at several museums that don't allow photography, and I actually enjoyed that experience. I think for the institution itself, for the museum, you can create a curated experience online so you're not giving away the kitchen sink, if you will. I don't know, I think, actually, I'm for it as a marketer.

Alison Stewart: Thanks for calling in. We appreciate it. Let's talk to Davis in Miami, who's calling in. Hi, Davis, thanks for making the time to call All Of It.

Davis: Oh, well, thank you. I just wanted to say I'm in my studio in Miami, painting as we speak. I do photograph details in paintings because it's instructive. I've had guards say sometimes, "Why don't you just buy the book and then you can take it home and look at it whenever you want?" If you're looking at a book and you get closer and closer to a magnifying glass, you end up seeing the dot pattern of the printing of the book. You don't see details.

Alison Stewart: Interesting.

Davis: The only way you can see that details is being there at the museum, looking at how the artist twisted the brush as he made that move across the canvas. It's an instructive learning experience that you are able to take home with you, you're able to grow with it. Maybe there's a way of having the best of both worlds, where a museum has a time of day when you can photograph. I understand that if somebody is not a painter, they want to just stand and look at the entire painting, and they don't want somebody in front of them taking a detail. Maybe a museum can have photography days for artists.

Alison Stewart: Yes, it's interesting. Thank you for calling. We got a text that says, "How about having no cell phone hours at museums? Kind of like photo-free Fridays?"

Will Pavia: Yes, like dogs off the leash in Central Park and say, "Everyone, go for it for an hour."

Alison Stewart: Speaking of dogs, let's talk to another museum exec from the Museum of the Dog on 40th and Park. Christopher, what say you?

Christopher: What a fun, perfect segue into this. Hi, everybody. I'm loving this conversation. I think it's so important to talk about it from our perspective. We are a small niche-ish museum with the largest collection of dog-related art and artifacts in the country, maybe the world. We rival the king of England. Aside from that, I love when people take photos in our museum for two reasons. One, we have a very tight marketing budget. It's great when we see things go viral on social media and all of that. We get the name out about the museum because I bet most people listening didn't know we existed, as I didn't before I worked here.

Also, I love seeing how people experience our collection, and we get to see that on social media when we're tagged or when people share it. It's so fun for me to see how people interact with-- if they have a breed that's represented in the art and they're there with their dog. We get some really fun, wonderful content that really just enriches our own conversation. We also have a constituency across the country of people who show dogs. We're affiliated with the AKC. So many of the people who are interested in our content are all over the country and world. We use photography and other people's photos to communicate and make people feel included.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for calling in. Love your museum, by the way. This text says, "This seems to be more of a question of the public's etiquette about other people in space and being respectful, and less about documenting the art."

Will Pavia: Interesting. I have been to the Museum of the Dog, by the way. At the end of it, there's a screen where you can put your face into it, and it will tell you what dog you are, which I think is another use of cameras, I suppose.

Alison Stewart: I have a question for you. In reporting this, did you talk to the people who have to be the bad guys and say, "Put down your camera"?

Will Pavia: Yes, I did. I talked to a couple of guards. Obviously, they're holding the thin blue line or whatever. I think they said most people, especially at the Frick, which is-- it's one of the few places that does it, that people are just very like, "Oh, I'm sorry." [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Will Pavia: Yes, it's a good question. I don't think they feel bad about doing it. I think they're just men with a job to do, or women, I should say.

Alison Stewart: The last text we got, "I'm a painter. I actually like to take photos of people taking photos of paintings."

Will Pavia: [laughs]

Alison Stewart: My guest has been the New York correspondent for The Times, Will Pavia. Thank you so much for joining us for this conversation.

Will Pavia: Thank you so much for having me.