Selfie sticks have been banned in at least three state museums, leaving Texans at a serious disadvantage when it comes to gearing up for next year’s Museum Selfie Day.
The Blanton Museum, in Austin, as well as the Dallas Museum of Art and the Perot Museum of Natural Science, in Dallas, all have bans on tripods and monopods that extend to selfie sticks, leaving visitors to settle for mediocre, arm-length-only selfies. Bummer! Most museums have rules against bringing tripods into their exhibition halls anyway—taking a family portrait in front of your favorite Pollock piece is a tad disruptive to other visitors—and these three museums are following a recent pattern of outlawing selfie sticks in places where they might infringe upon another person’s experience.
There are plenty of people who argue that taking selfies in museums is great, and you should just do you when it comes to enjoying some of the world’s greatest works of art. Selfies are cultural artifacts too! There are entire Tumblr blogs dedicated to memorializing some of our time’s greatest moments of digital self-portraiture, think pieces have been written, and Kim Kardashian is releasing what could be the definitive piece of selfie literature. Take all the selfies you want—just check to make sure your new selfie stick is allowed before you head out for your next museum day.
Besides, you don’t really need an arm-extending device to take a picture that perfectly captures your own face alongside a marble sculpture or famous oil painting. Practice your arm stretches, bring along a particularly tall, lanky friend, or do what Beyoncé and Jay-Z did and have someone in your entourage take the photo for you.
Photo courtesy of iStock.
