I tend to ignore wall text in museums, mainly because I don’t want to die of a stroke. I see so many mistakes it drives me crazy, not to mention the patronizing tone so many have without ever passing along pertinent information. I believe wall text can be informative and interesting without alienating anyone.
Museums are increasingly geared towards children and the people that teach these children are ruining so much of what’s important about art and the teaching of it by behaving as if all children are so stupid they could never understand even the most basic formalistic ideas. Unfortunately, this “child proofing” of art extends to adults, too.

OK, I could write a book on all of this and I’m having trouble streamlining my thoughts because it’s important to me.
I guess the bottom line is, yes art should be for everyone but that implies that people have to meet art halfway at least and not expect it all to be handed to them in a safe, bland manner.

I must take some exception. I might not be a bona fide expert if I were to absorb and regurgitate all the information on wall labels, but I would be a prodigy of memorization and would know more than most of the people working at the museum.

I don’t tend to think that the work/label axis is so terribly important. Viewers head for the text when they see something that attracts them. It matters that the information they receive is factual, leads them to further sources and is relatively free of adjectives. And it should never come across as the last word.

to me the key has always been the effect of aching feet. I remember walking by an entire gallery of Rembrandts at the Met because my feet were killing me.

I agree that modesty and skepticism about public (or private) institutions are always useful. And certainly text can get in the way of the art. But I’m resistant to blanket condemnations.

If museums are to cater to a wide variety of people,and clearly they should be, and to people educated in a wide variety of ways, and to people with a wide range of experiences, they (museums) will necessarily have to use a wide variety of different tools. What works for one person, who may need to resist reading the labels, won’t work for another, who really wants to know the precise date that this Cezanne was painted.

And I think we need to sort through which tools might result in dummying down and which are wonderful additions. Once the audio materials got standardized and working reliably, I was very grateful for them. I could listen or not, I could look without having to peer at labels (which are always too small for my poor eyesight), and while I often don’t use the audio materials, I can see that others do and that the materials really work for them. They actually slow down the viewers, who look for what is being discussed in the audio. This can’t be bad (and if it’s annoying, the audio can be resisted). I think a wireless pointing system could be even better if it could be made to work.

Projected phrases above the art make more sense then tiny labels or painted information. Why not project them — cheaper than printing, I should think. And again, the labels can be ignored.

So I think before I’m willing to accept a blanket condemnation such as was presented here, I need more specifics about what is being done and said. I don’t see the use of audio equipment a dummying device, unless the recorded information somehow diminishes the art. I don’t see why the Tate’s activities are bad, although I’m a bit old to be interested in them. And the computer-generated art may be simplistic, but so is much paint-generated art. Bad art abounds. As does good art and museum folks who are desperately trying to entice and educate as well as present.