THE CURSE OF QR CODES IN MUSEUMS
THEY HAVE THEIR BENEFITS BUT OFTEN REDUCE ACCESSIBILITY
IN T H E E A R LY 19 9 0 s, Masahiko Hara, an engineer at Denso Wave Inc., a global auto parts manufacturer that falls under the Toyota umbrella, came up with a new type of bar code that could hold exponentially more information than the vertical bar patterns in use at the time. The QR code, as Hara’s code is now better known, emerged out of a very specific need: to better manage inventory at Denso factories. Since the average bar code can only hold 20 or so alphanumeric characters, the factory was using multiple bar codes to track parts through a complex system of inventory and shipment — requiring multiple scans at every stop in the supply chain. By contrast, a single QR code could contain hundreds of characters’ worth of information and therefore
only require a single scan.
The QR code — a square that contains a pattern of black and white squares of varying dimensions within — has since become ubiquitous, especially since the early 2000s, when cellphones with QR readers were made available to the public.
QR codes have since appeared on advertising billboards, allowing customers to make on-thespot purchases or bookmark them for later. In 2009, Japanese architectural studio Terada Hirate Sekkei covered the facade of an entire Tokyo building in a QR pattern. Three years later, the city of Rio de Janeiro embedded QR codes into popular tourist locales around the city so that visitors could scan them to learn more about a site. Last year, a painting by Mario Ayala at the Hammer Museum’s “Made in L.A.” biennial titled “Angel’s Fruits” bore a QR code that, when followed, took you to a musical playlist on YouTube.
The pandemic has made QR codes even more ubiquitous: employed as event tickets, to view restaurant menus, in digital health passes and vaccination cards as well as, increasingly, in museums. They are a blessing and a curse — and a lesson that more technology doesn’t always make life easier.
In the best scenarios, QR codes have served as an additive. At the Hammer Museum, they have recently materialized at the entrance of exhibitions such as “Witch Hunt” and “No Humans Involved” and can be scanned for information that goes beyond the exhibition’s wall text. This includes curator commentary, additional texts and video that is viewable through the Bloomberg Connects app, a digital platform created by Bloomberg Philanthropies to support cultural institutions.
At L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, QR codes have likewise been used largely as additive. During live performances, they have been deployed as a way of leading viewers to a PDF program of the show. For visual arts installations, QR codes are used to connect visitors with a digital Spanish-language guide. (I’ll save my rant, about how L.A. museums should have English and Spanish wall text at all times, for another day.)
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has likewise been using them in this way, though, as of late, the museum’s QR code use has gone from techno-additive to grating digital tic.
I recently paid a visit to LACMA’s sensational “Mixpantli: Space, Time, and the Indigenous Origins of Mexico,” where I was greeted by a gesture of accessibility: an opening wall text in four languages, including Nahuatl and Zapotec. After which I was left to puzzle out the series of works made by Indigenous scribes in Mexico in the early colonial era — because the show featured absolutely no wall text beyond the title, credit and material type. For any sort of information, I was required to scan a QR code.
Included in the show, for example, is an absolutely exquisite drawing that shows a mysterious series of bundles, as well as a rendering of a bird and various human heads. The piece is titled “Idols From the Temple of Huitzilopochtli” and was originally created in 1539. (The museum has a contemporary re-creation on view.) To find out what I was looking at, I had to scan a QR code next to the work, which explained that the painting documents the ways in which the Mexica leaders of the early colonial era had hidden a cache of sacred objects from the invading Spanish as a way of preserving their cultural traditions.
Audio was also available, but it wouldn’t play on my phone because LACMA’s online guide didn’t work with my default browser. So I had to cut and paste the link into another browser so that I could hear what curators had to say about the work.
As the kids like to say: hard pass.
I am no Luddite when it comes to technology. There is a benefit to creating experiences that make the work on view accessible in ways that go beyond the museum or that help the museum reach different audiences. (QR codes, for example, can help visually impaired visitors more fully experience an exhibition.) But replacing basic wall text with QR codes strikes me as erecting a barrier around the most basic knowledge a visitor travels to a museum to absorb.
A LACMA spokesperson says the museum is “still experimenting heavily with QRs” and that some of the use was driven by the pandemic — to prevent people from gathering around wall texts at a time in which we still need to be social distancing. But I wonder how many people will enter and leave that gallery without going through the trouble of scanning the codes and therefore will depart LACMA without even the most basic understanding of what they have just seen. My mother-in-law still carries a flip phone — how is she supposed to find out what the bird drawing means? And what do I do if my phone battery is dead?
This is a case of technology subtracting from the experience. I spend enough time on my pocket doom machine. In the confines of a museum, it’d be nice not to be obligated to reach for it.