The unexpected success of the grumpy guide at the Düsseldorf Art Palace Museum
The Düsseldorf Art Palace Museum, which houses collections of paintings, photographs, and graphic arts, has implemented a strategy to boost visitor numbers: it has created the figure of a very peculiar guide, Joseph Langelinck, who is not characterized by patient and meticulous explanation, but quite the opposite. He conducts an explanatory tour of the museum in a deliberately sour and condescending tone. He seeks to humiliate visitors, highlighting their lack of culture and making them feel, in his own words, "as ignorant as possible." He demands answers to his questions, reprimands them for looking at their phones, boos them if they stray from the group, and scolds them if they sit on any of the benches along the route. Of course, this is an actor, Carl Brandi, who plays this rigid and aggressive character who also questions the museum's criteria and the value of the works. He mocks some of the exhibited pieces and the artists, rejects certain stylistic movements, and criticizes the fact that some rooms resemble department stores. The Palau d'Art has named the experience the Grumpy GuideThe grumpy guide has been an unprecedented success. It began last May, and the show is so in demand that every weekly session sells out immediately. According to the museum, the public readily accepts Joseph Langelinck's outbursts.
The concept changes the traditional role of the expert—educational and attentive—and transforms it into an arrogant and cruel figure, exploring new codes for cultural dissemination. Instead of fostering accessibility and positive emotional connections, it captures visitors' attention through shock and verbal violence.
This desire for transgression, to subvert the museum ethos, is not so original. It connects with the brutally honest television that has fueled the success of characters like Hugh Laurie's Dr. House or Ricky Gervais's stand-up routines. Or, on another level, Risto Mejide's robot-stretching as a judge on... talent showsIt is also the legacy of all the hate that has catapulted toxic masculinity to the top of the rankings. YouTubers and strimers. Inertias that combat the possibility of a more inclusive and kinder world through aggressive questioning and the promotion of a supposed uncomfortable truth that overvalues sincerity. Sensitivity is scorned as a shared virtue, and the trend toward democratizing museums is destroyed. Awakening the shame of ignorance, moreover, revives the classist idea of culture as a space for intellectual elites. It extols the pedagogy of harshness now that many consider education so soft and docile that it makes people idiots.
However, it turns out it works. It brings more visitors to the museum and gives the institution a media impact it hadn't had until now. Television and digital cultural channels have echoed the popularity and effectiveness of the surly guide, raising the question of whether people are interested in the museum itself or in witnessing the staging of a mockery. The critic and essayist John Berger questioned the way museums constructed perceptions and concepts of power, authority, and social hierarchy. Grumpy Guide It takes this to the extreme, incorporating a kind of emotional obedience and submission to the narrative provided by the museum itself. It's theatrical and fictional, but it also seems to be cathartic and pleasurable.
Perhaps it can be interpreted as a performance It is an artistic work that warns of this fondness for lucid bitterness, but it can also be perceived as an idealization of that cruel, value-free social cynicism that is gaining ground.
