Young people and art: “Going to a museum on a Saturday? My friends would tell me no way."

It's Friday afternoon.

11 young people between the ages of 18 and 26 from different parts of Spain, with different studies and jobs, write in the WhatsApp groups of their friends: "Shall we go see an exhibition tomorrow?"

Lucía Rodríguez, 22, a marketing student, lives in Castellón: “They would tell me: 'No way, why are we going to do that?'

She goes from time to time, a few years ago she began to paint and her drawing took her to museums.

Her mother, she recalls, had already tried when she and her sister were little, but she had little success.

Between March 2021 and February 2022, 25.5% of Spaniards consulted in the survey of cultural consumption of the National Institute of Statistics (INE) said that they had visited museums, exhibitions and art galleries.

If you put the magnifying glass on,

young people between the ages of 15 and 19 who went to one of these institutions add up to 22.7%, and those between the ages of 20 and 24, 29%, are the age group that shows the most interest in art.

But if any of them had asked their friends to go to the movies or to a concert, they probably would have received a different response.

The INE study concludes that the most frequent cultural activities were listening to music, watching film videos or series, and reading, with annual rates of 85.7%, 77.7%, and 61.7%, respectively.

Most of those interviewed for this report say that in their groups they would receive the same messages as Rodríguez.

Daniel Arribas, 26 years old, from Madrid, a programmer, would have focused the shot on the group with which he usually makes this plan, two boys and two girls.

Natalia Serrano, 25 years old, from Madrid, works as a

in social networks, perhaps she would have convinced a friend of hers.

Clara Rivas, 24, from Bilbao, who has finished a master's degree in law, would have ended up going alone: ​​“I can't take someone by the hand if she doesn't want to”.

Emma Aparicio, at the Alma Mater Museum in Zaragoza.

Carlos Gil Roig

Daniel Arribas, in a theater room, in Madrid. INMA FLORES (EL PAIS)

Clara Rivas, 24 years old, in front of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Fernando Domingo-Aldama

Eugenia Tenenbaum, art historian. Massimiliano Minocri

Inés de Villoutreys, 19, an animation student, in front of the Prado Museum, in Madrid. INMA FLORES (EL PAIS)

The young woman from Castellón Lucía Rodriguez photographed in the Espai d'Art Contemporani de Castelló. ANGEL SANCHEZ

Lola Puentes, 18 years old, architecture student, in Seville.PACO PUENTES

Art is at the bottom of leisure plans due to the price, the lack of information and lack of communication from the museums, considering it "classist, snobbish, for the elderly", due to the way in which it is taught in the school, that is, due to ignorance and little interest,... These are some of the conclusions reached by the young people interviewed.

"There is a failure in how art history is transmitted, both from the classroom and especially from museums and their communication teams and social networks," says Eugenia Tenenbaum, a 25-year-old Galician, one of the most followed art disseminators. on the internet among generation Z and millennials (almost 90,000 followers on Instagram).

"Museums are still trying to get closer to youth and until now they didn't even consider us a

[objective public], when in reality we are the future of visitors and museum workers."

Mabel Tapia, deputy artistic director of the Reina Sofía Museum, says that, after the drop in visits due to the covid, they have recovered the figures prior to the pandemic, with a special increase among young people.

In the Museo del Prado they assure that "the most nourished age group" among its visitors is that of 18 to 24 years, with 22.9%, followed by that of 25 to 34, with 21.33%.

And they boast of being the museum in the world with the most followers on Tik Tok (more than 420,000), an account that is mainly attended by people between the ages of 18 and 24.

Despite these data, Arribas says he feels like the youngest in the room when he looks around him, for example, at the Reina Sofía, one of the museums he goes to the most.

"I think that museums give us a hopeless case," adds Rodríguez.

"They don't usually expand the audience they are targeting," says Inés de Villoutreys, 19, an animation student from Madrid.

Nacho Paniagua is from Valladolid, but lives in Florence where he has set up a tourist agency with two friends.

He is 23 years old and after more than a year doing artistic tours around the city, he considers that "young people see museums as something for older people".

What his younger clients most demand is that he tell them "crimes and mysteries" related to art.

"If it is already an unattractive plan for some people, if you add the economic component... in the years in which it may interest you the most is when you lose the discounts that they give you when you were not interested," says Clara Rivas to the one that has one year left to lose that privilege of being young.

"I have no expectations of being a millionaire in a year."

Violeta Quevedo, born in Albacete and a medical student in Valencia, Lola Puentes, from Bollulos de la Mitación in Seville, Emma Aparicio, a physiotherapy student in Zaragoza, and Eva Tellez, from Alcalá de Henares, all four 18 years old, have applied for the cultural bonus of 400 euros to spend, they agree, on books, mainly.

In the case of Puentes, an architecture student, in books for the university due to their high price.

The rest will be used for comics or other genres they like,

and, secondly, to go to concerts.

None of the four had planned to allocate that money to go to museums until the question was raised.

The art behind the algorithm

Social networks served to keep museums, in some way, open during confinement.

But as Violeta Quevedo explains, the algorithm by which the networks are governed rewards the topics that interest them and hides those that never stop to look.

Like art for example.

In your case, Spotify always notifies you of the concerts of your favorite artists.

"Yes, there is an invisibility on the part of the algorithms, but I think that in many cases it also has to start from us and try to find this content," acknowledges Tenenbaum.

They do not go to the newspapers and do not know if there is any cultural publication that serves as a leisure guide.

Tenenbaum, author of

(Today's Issues), an essay on what fails in the organization of "museums that generate frustration in us and teach us to be in a hurry", considers that art also has to do with class, with race, with gender, with the way high culture is distinguished from popular culture, a dichotomy in which he says he does not believe.

“There are movements to keep it as a niche that most people don't have access to.

That is what generates a certain status.

The working class or any cultural minority will feel that they do not belong to that.

We do not see ourselves reflected in museum exhibitions or in their organizational charts”.

This feeling changes radically when art becomes a tourism plan as obligatory as visiting a monument or trying a typical dish.

Serrano sums it up: "If we go on a trip to a city and there is a famous painting that we must see once in a lifetime, we go to the museum."

Go see what they have told you that you have to see, such as the

in the Louvre even if you have to wait in line for hours in front of a showcase and the reflections prevent you from enjoying the piece well.

“This is what is important, this is what you have to like”, explains Tenenbaum, “it generates a disconnection and a guilt that is totally contrary to the aesthetic enjoyment or critical analysis of any work”.

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