How to Visit a Museum: 10 Great Tips to Make the Most Out of Your Museum Trip

How to Visit a Museum: Top 10 Tips to Make the Most Out of Your Museum Trip

Updated On: December 13, 2023 by   Ciaran ConnollyCiaran Connolly

Introduction – How To Enjoy A Museum?

There is no right or wrong way to enjoy a museum, and museums mean something different to each of us. Whether you enjoy quiet contemplation of the scenery and objects or excited chatter about funny portraits in the gallery you can have a great time at the museum. There are some things you can do to add extra experiences, fun, and appreciation to your museum visit experience. This article will give you top tips and ideas, from planning to reflection, which will help you get the most out of your museum visit.

Top 10 Tips On How To Visit A Museum

  1. Research Before You Visit A Museum
  2. Plan Your Museum Visit Experience Ahead of Time
  3. Plan Your Route Around The Museum
  4. Read Information Provided & Ask For More
  5. Visit During A Less Busy Time, But Not A Monday!
  6. Let Your Local Museum Come To You
  7. Take Part In Some Activities While At The Museum
  8. Go Behind The Scenes At The Museum
  9. Visit Other Hertitage Sites
  10. Think Back On Your Museum Visit Experience Afterwards

1. Research Before You Visit A Museum

What museum do you want to visit?

There are many types of museums around the world as well as small local museums which offer interesting insights. There are museums focused on a topic such as sports, music, or cinema and national museums which have a lot of different topics in one place, like the Natural History Museum in London.

Where is your favourite art piece displayed? Is it on tour?

A great way to plan a trip to visit a museum or gallery is to find something you are interested in and go to see it. Masterpieces like the Mona Lisa don’t move often but you may be lucky enough to catch your favourite art peice in your local museum if you keep an eye on travelling exhibitions. Art works from artists like Rembrandt and da Vinci tour around the world from museum to museum.

When you’ve picked a museum to visit you should find out:

  • What’s at the museum?
  • What’s being loaned to the museum? Is there an exhibition on for a limited time?
  • What do you want to see at the museum? (This is especially important in large scale museums with a huge collection)
  • What is the history of the museum and how did it start? This may enrich your thoughts of the whole experience of the collection as you know why certain things were collected. Some museums start from just a single persons’ collection. For example, The Hunterian Museum in Glasgow which started with the anatomical collections of William Hunter.
How to Visit a Museum: 10 Great Tips to Make the Most Out of Your Museum Trip
Hunterian Museum, Glasgow. Owned by the University of Glasgow and started by the collections of William Hunter.
  • Check out the collection – Some museums have their collections catalogue online for you to look through in detail and most have highlights of their catalogue listed. The Hunterian Museum is one of those institutions, click here to search for any object in their collection.
  • Look at their social media – You may find out about new objects in the collection, events or interesting work being done in the museum. YouTube is a great tool used by museums to encourage and educate visitors. Try checking out a museums’ YouTube before your trip to get a feel for the place.
Video Experience of Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ via the MoMa YouTube channel.

2. Plan Your Museum Visit Experience Ahead of Time

There are a few important things to plan for before you arrive at the museum:

  • Food
  • Accesibility
  • Facilities
  • Pricing

Food

Food is only allowed in designated areas of museums (due to pest control measures) so plan meals around your trip or maybe visit the museum café hallway through to take a break. You can also pack some sealed snacks to eat in a picnic or cafe area.

Accesibility

It is important to look up the accessibility of the museum as some are in older buildings which makes disability access difficult or in some cases impossible such as the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam. Knowing the best route in and around the museum can help make your trip more relaxed.

Some museums and galleries offer low sensory hours for those who suffer due to overstimulation. Soundscaping is a common tool of museums which may cause issues for some who are sensitive to noice. You can get in touch with museum staff beforehand to discuss any spaces in the museum with these features and to ask about quiet hours.

Facilities

You may also be interested in the facilities available such as toilets and baby changing facilities. Due to the older buildings a lot of museums and galleries are in the toilets can be unusual and hard to find. One particular Twitter page discusses the toilets at museums and helps people find out of the way bathrooms in museums and galleries. They also raise awareness for bathroom accessibility issues in museums and galleries.

Museum Toilets Twitter Page

Pricing

Pricing may be a consideration you have when planning your trip to the museum as there may be entry fees or paid exhibitions which you may not want to miss. It is best to look up the pricing of the museum or gallery before you arrive, and check for consession discounts. Also worth checking is:

  • Do they offer a locals discount (if you live near the museum). Museums often want to encourage community engagement which means they may offer discounts or free entry to locals.
  • For Example, The Brighton Museum and Art Gallery offer free entry to residents of the Brighton and Hove area, with proof of address.
How to Visit a Museum: 10 Great Tips to Make the Most Out of Your Museum Trip
Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, UK
  • Do they offer a multi-museum pass? This is especially important in big cities with multiple museums in a small area.
  • For Example, Berlin’s Museum Island which contains five museums, instead of buying five tickets you can buy one which gets you in to all five. You can book these tickets online or at any of the five museums which make up the island.
How to Visit a Museum: 10 Great Tips to Make the Most Out of Your Museum Trip
The Bode Museum on the Museum Island in Berlin, Germany.

Avoiding Museum Fatigue

Museum fatigue starts to kick in after around 2 hours in a museum, a major hinderance for the dedicated tourist trying to see the whole of a national museum in one day. Your brain can only take in so much and your feet will get sore. The best ways to avoid museum fatigue are:

  • Wear comfortable shoes
  • Use the benches provided to take a break
  • Plan to only see the things you want to see best when organising your visit
  • Drink water while you walk around
  • Stop for lunch or a snack halfway around
  • For larger museums it may be helpful to break up your exploration into two days, some museums even offer a returning ticket, so you can come and go for the duration of your trip, or for the rest of the week, month, or year.
  • Don’t worry if you don’t see everything, take your time to enjoy what you do see.

3. Plan Your Route Around The Museum

Once you have an idea of the museum you are going to, what is available to see there, and the scale of the museum it is probably a good idea to plan how to tackle your museum visit experience. When you visit a museum it can be overwhelming without a plan so ask yourself:

  • Can I walk around this entire museum in one go? If not, where can I take breaks?
  • Is there a set route? Do you want to start from the top or the bottom, what rooms do you care most about?
  • What objects do you really need to see during your trip? Have a look online for where those things are and plan them into your route. You might not see everything in a large museum but this way you won’t be dissapointed.
  • Do they have a map? You can usually grab a map at the information desk or online before you go. Maybe even take a virtual tour or check if the museum has an app, this is an upcoming options for museums trying to increase their accessibility to visitors.

You can even watch tours of previous exhibits or existing spaces in the museum on YouTube to find out more about what to expect.

Smithsonian Museum Tour Guided by Curator

4. Read Information Provided & Ask For More

You don’t have to visit a museum blind, there is lots of information available before you go or to pick up at the front desk. Museums often provide guides, audio guides, object labels which are printed in large text for ease of reading, and even activities for kids visiting a museum. These are provided online or at the museum, it is always a great idea to check before visiting so you don’t miss out on new information or a fun family activity. You may even find colouring sheets to bring with you that correspond to different galleries.

Try talking to a member of staff, especially ones which are stationed in the galleries, they see the peices everyday and may be able to reveal some interesting secrets about the peices.

An Interesting Example:

How to Visit a Museum: 10 Great Tips to Make the Most Out of Your Museum Trip
Screenshot of the Catalogue Entry for Lavery’s ‘The Lady in Black’ (Miss Trevor) Taken from the NMNI website.

This painting was created by a Northern Irish artist named John Lavery, and is displayed at the Ulster Museum in Belfast. When talking to a gallery attendant there I found out the most interesting thing about that painting, which is how people look at it.

Lavery’s careful use of light affects how this painting is viewed, your attention is first caught by her face, then travels down the belt at her waist, goes to her shoe where the light glints, then returns to her hand. When you watch visitors looking at the painting you can see their eyes moving in the shape of a diamond as they follow the light with their eyes. I never would have known if not for talking to the staff there, it was well worth asking some questions.

5. Visit During A Less Busy Time, But Not A Monday!

Most museums close on Monday due to the fact they open all weekend. Museums also have times when they are most busy, like Sunday afternoons.

Search engines with visitor analytics such as Google can help you check when the museums’ busiest times are so you can best plan your trip to avoid being overwhelmed with crowds. Going at a less busy time allows you to better take your time and enjoy the scenery of the galleries and look at the objects more closely.

How to Visit a Museum: 10 Great Tips to Make the Most Out of Your Museum Trip
Busiest Times for the Jewish Museum in Prague

6. Let Your Local Museum Come To You

Some museums are even willing to come to you. Schools, libraries, community centers, and nursing homes can all have museum outreach programs organised for those who don’t feel comfortable or able to visit a museum itself. And in some cases handling kits and interesting activities can be brought to your community. This is the case for Glasgow Life who provide a collection of tactile objects to a range of community groups to show them the work that is going on in Glasgow’s museums. The staff at Leighton and Sambourne House in London have created a portfolio of their collections to share it with those who can’t visit in person.

Get in touch with your local museums to ask about what they do in your local community, you may even have the chance to set up a new community outreach program.

7. Take Part In Some Activities While At The Museum

When you visit a museum you don’t have to just look around and take in the scenery these are a few fun activities to try during you museum visit experience:

  • Book a Tour – A great way to see all you want to see and learn lots about the collection and how it came to be at the museums, make sure to ask lots of questions.
  • Go to a Museum Event – most museums don’t just offer tours, they offer crafting classes, movie screenings, children’s takeovers, and much more.
  • Try some Object Observation – this is a technique used by museum professionals when researching an object to try and understand it fully. Some methods are as simple as looking at an object from a distance to tell if it was meant to be used for something intricate or something more large scale. There are many methods of doing an object observation and there are no right answers. Try looking at damage or wear on objects, this might give you an idea of how it was used.
  • Create art at the art gallery – draw what you see, recreate a masterpiece, or write some poetry or a report on your thoughts about the collection.
  • Play an observation based game – please don’t play tag in museums but you can play the ‘Dog Painting Game’ which is when you compete with your friends or family to try and spot a dog in a painting first. You can also play the ‘Cat Painting Game’ if you aren’t a cat person. Or even a game of ‘Who Can Find the Silliest Mustache in a Painting Game’, which is great as there will be lots of fierce debate.

8. Go Behind The Scenes At The Museum

There are a few ways you can see more of a museum and understand the work which happens at the museum. There is lots of interesting work going on behind the scenes and most of the collection held by the museum is stored there.

Check out this video to see the treasures hidden in museum stores.

To see more from the museum why not try:

  • Watching behind the scenes content – There are lots of YouTube videos from museums and the Victoria and Albert Museum has a whole TV series on their work.
Victoria and Albert Museum YouTube channel
  • Check out their website – museums often have a blog or information pages which can tell you more about their team and what they do.
  • Booking a Tour – check online to see if the museum you are visiting to see if they offer a behind the scenes tour where you can visit their collection stores or conservation studios.
  • Pretend to be a curator while at the museum – discuss how things are displayed, maybe make up your own exhibition plan – This can help you think about the museum and the objects in a different way.
A video showing the creation of an exhibit

9. Visit Other Hertitage Sites

Traditional gallery style museums aren’t the only option for an interesting heritage day out. Why not try a historic house, a medieval castle, or an archeological site? These sites often have a museum there as well. Visiting a historic dwelling is an interesting and tactile way to interact with history.

Why not visit George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon, The Old Bishops Palace in Wolvesey Castle, Winchester UK, or even the border which held back the Romans at Hadrians Wall.

How to Visit a Museum: 10 Great Tips to Make the Most Out of Your Museum Trip
Wolvesey Castle, Winchester, England

10. Think Back On Your Museum Visit Experience Afterwards

Firstly after walking around a museum,  Maybe visit the shop, if you love a piece of art you could buy a print of it to display at home for a very unique décor piece.

After that, If you found a particular person, time period, or object interesting why not learn more about it? The museum can be the foundation of a new passion that you can learn all about. You may even find out about another museum which has more on that topic, or a way of visiting your new favourite historical figures house.

The most important thing about getting the most out of your museum visit experience is to enjoy yourself and maybe learn something new. Check out our articles for more museum suggestions such as the Acropolis Museum, Athens and many more!

2 commments on “How to Visit a Museum: 10 Great Tips to Make the Most Out of Your Museum Trip

  1. Heya.

    I love to visit museums in order to have some fun. In addition to make the utmost of my day there I see if I can find a map. Also I take a good look at the website of the museum in question to get more details. Talk to staff at the museum about what to see and do at the museum. You can also telephone or email the museum in advance. Best wishes to you here.

    Museums are fun places to go to. Bring a snack, a camera and a bottle of water to have. Find out if there are any events on.

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