The eerie experience of visiting a socially distanced art gallery

Ravi Ghosh | Prospect | 1st August 2020

Impatient for art galleries to re-open, this writer shares his misgivings when he finally gets to visit. Instead of enjoying their “alluring emptiness” he is filled with doubt. “Everyone is masked, and we avoid each other like repelling magnets. We can’t see each other’s smiles under the face coverings, which creates an air of imagined stand-offishness”. Was this visit a mistake? Rather than supportive, has he been “foolish and selfish”? (He did enjoy the art.)