In the face of this global pandemic, many shuttered museums and galleries have begun offering virtual tours to quarantined culture fans. But one local art museum has taken it even further: In order to ensure an authentic museum-going experience, they’ve added a guy on a first date that will explain everything to you.
Once you begin the virtual tour, you will be able to view a vast array of stunning paintings, vibrant sculptures, informative signs, and a guy in a seasonally inappropriate scarf lecturing his politely bored date about critical theory, color theory, design theory, and many other theories.
Why did the virtual tour need Silas? (His name is Silas.)
“Clicking through the early demos, I knew something wasn’t quite capturing that distinctive museum feeling,” the museum’s director explained. “And then it hit me: we needed a really annoying, loud-talking guy.”
The tour allows viewers to both see and hear Silas monologue about dadaism’s most common misconceptions, how the exhibit’s designers must not have thought about flow at all, and how feminist critiques of Picasso ignore the context of his time. And to add further legitimacy to the experience, Silas will never physically or verbally check in on the better-looking woman he’s with to gauge her interest in any of the above topics.
Though he’s not impressing his date, Silas has thus far been a big hit with the museum’s e-goers.
“I’d never done a virtual tour before,” said one skeptical art history professor. “I wasn’t sure at first if it would be anything like being in a museum, but then I saw the despair in that poor girl’s eyes, and it suddenly became real.”
The success of Silas has encouraged the tour’s designers to add even more true-to-life features. Over the next few weeks, they plan on incorporating an art student who really wants you to comment on the accuracy of the reproduction she’s sketching, a couple who dutifully takes pictures of the plaques without actually looking at any of the art, and a docent who is visibly concerned about how close you are to the paintings.
And if your virtual tour has left you a little thirsty, you’re in luck: Silas happens to know a really vibey virtual whiskey bar that’s right around the corner.
