ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the actual observed manifestations of the customizable visit—at Tate Britain and Tate Modern. It explores how the art museum scene in the United States is managed very differently given the paucity of public funding. The chapter shows that they privilege the visitor as an autonomous maker of meaning and provides the conditions in which the visitor can essentially curate her own show out of the raw materials and space provided by the museum. The relentless competition for visitors in a set of circumstances widely understood as an attention economy has driven museums to take on the methods and strategies of marketing, including the segmentation of visitors into discrete categories. The contemporary conditions of the art museum visit have brought about other options besides the visitor having her gaze tutored by the curator, besides the connoisseurial layout, besides the spectacle, beyond the universal survey museum, and other than the ace cafe with a museum attached.
