Theodor Adorno once said that the association between the museum and the mausoleum was rather more than phonetic. He felt that both had a deathly silence and both were houses of the deceased. For people who find the silence of the museum intimidating, the British Museum has had a bright idea. The silence at its new exhibition of the Celts is filled with the sound of pan pipes. Whether pan pipes are your thing or not, pan pipes is what you get.
The idea, which is becoming common practice in British museums, is that the music relaxes people and encourages them to interact with the exhibition. For those who have no wish to “interact” with anything and are perfectly happy just looking at the exhibits in the traditional way, this music is dissonant and intrusive. There is indeed something ecclesiastical about the silence in the museum but that is a good thing. It is a silence, as Larkin says in Church Going, “brewed God knows how long”. It allows contemplation of time past, embodied in the artefacts.
If any visitors really are unable to appreciate the life of the Celts without a musical soundtrack they could always be given their own one , programmed into a handheld audio guides which tell you about the early years of the Picts just as you are looking at the later years of the Celts.
Not the least of the improvements of that arrangement would be that the staff on duty would not have to listen to pan pipes all day. Indeed, there is no reason why anyone else should either. The default setting should be Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition but why not let visitors choose Broad Majestic Shannon by The Pogues or The Dubliners’ version of Whiskey in the Jar? That would liven the place up while, at the same time, leaving the more traditional visitor to contemplate the exhibition in reverent peace.