Monday Manners: People Stand in Line to See the Boy King (King Tut)

Look, but don't linger.
The impressive thing about Egyptian handicraft is just how ornate everything is. It's carved, gilded, and inlaid on all sides, both inside and out. It deserves a long look. But after you've circled the display case 360° in order to take everything in, step aside and give someone else a turn. The display case is not where you should be having long conversations with your friends. You can discuss the craftsmen's choice of lapis lazuli as an inlay material five feet away from the case just as easily as you can with your nose pressed to the glass.

Wait in empty space.
Museums have benches for many reasons – not the least of which so that you can sit and wait for your friends who are going through the exhibit more slowly than you are. That way, you're not occupying someone else's prime viewing space. Benches are occupied? Find a less-crowded space along the perimeter of the room and park yourself there. That way, people who still haven't seen the things you have will get a turn, and you won't get pushed or stepped on.

Take a few steps back.
Know that painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte? (Of course you do.) With pointillism, when you stand close to the painting, all you see are dots; you don't see the whole picture until you stand back. Post-Impressionist painters aside, this is actually a good rule of thumb for most museum exhibits. Curators put a lot of thought into how artifacts are displayed, and often group them in a way that is not just appropriate to their time period (or, in the Tut exhibit's case, Dynasty), but also aesthetically pleasing. If you're hovering over a case looking at one canopic jar, you're looking at a part, not at the whole. Taking a few steps back lets you see the exhibit as it's meant to be seen – and also allows more people to do the same. And the curatorial cards over the display cases are bigger and easier to read, anyway.

We can read, too.
You may find yourself at a museum with a person who, for one reason or another, is unable to read the information that accompanies each artifact. Maybe he forgot his glasses. Maybe he's six. In this case, you should definitely help your companion along by reading the cards out loud. But instead of out loud, try reading them out quiet. The thirty people standing behind you don't need to hear you yelling about the changing face of Egyptian temple architecture. A museum is louder than a library, but you don't need to yell over the background noise as if you're at a rock concert.

Your audio tour is not the boss of you.
Who doesn't love Omar Sharif? He's Dr. Zhivago, for chrissake! So it was awesome to discover that he narrated the audio tour for the King Tut exhibit. It was the notion of having Sharif's subtly accented voice in my ears that made me decide to go with the headset this time around. That being said: select exhibition cases have numbers on them, indicating what track on your special museum headset you should be listening to – but that doesn't mean that you have to stare into the case during the full audio explanation. Feel free to browse the other cases in the room while the sultry tones of your narrator's voice continue to explain to you what was in that first case. Otherwise, you're looking at a long, long day at the museum.

Image via Flickr user Zesmerelda. Post title brought to you by Steve Martin.