Museums ban require mobile phones

Museums across the country, once averse to noisy cellphones, are suddenly encouraging their use. In the past year, about a dozen art institutions — including museums in Los Angeles, Berkeley, Calif., Tacoma, Wash., Minneapolis and Greenwich, Conn. — have begun offering cellphone tours, mostly for free. Dozens more are in the process of implementing the service.

One reason for the surge is the emergence of companies such as Guide by Cell of San Francisco, Ashburn, Va.-based Spatial Adventures and Minneapolis-based Museum411, which run computer servers and phone systems so museums don't have to.

As the article goes on to point out, it costs quite a bit to offer an audioguide service, between staffing the pickup and retrieval stations, cleaning the handsets between uses, and the inevitable maintenance chores. It wasn't that many years ago that I was ordered to check my phone before entering a German museum (I wasn't talking on it; they asked me if I had a phone, and I answered truthfully -- turning it off apparently wasn't an option). Now that everyone carries a phone, however, I rather doubt that policy is still in force. In any event, the real issue is not listening on a phone, but talking and being rung up -- and there museums will surely continue to regulate phone use.

Posted by David on March 21, 2006 12:27 PM