Art historian and art tour guide Lauren Kaplan talks about:
Her start in giving tour guides at venues from the Met and the Guggenheim to galleries around Chelsea; the pros of giving tours at the Met- open and flexible access, liberal policies towards guides, and cons- some of the other tour leaders aren't properly educated and give misinformation to their groups, which Lauren says isn't her problem though it obviously doesn't make it an ideal context for her business; how she organizes her largest tours, which can be up to 40 people, by dividing the group in half and leading a tour for each half while the other looks around on their own; a particularly memorable encounter with a star actor while doing a slightly compromised tour at The Frick Museum; how small tours (families of four) are more conversational that big tours (30-40) which are more lecture-based; teaching people on her tours to feel comfortable not knowing what they're looking at, and how she regularly takes Chelsea gallery tour groups to shows she knows they won't like or get (and sometimes that she doesn't like), which invariably lead to the most interesting conversations; some of her memorable gallery show tours, including Thomas Schutte, Terence Koh and Carrie Mae Weems; the "ven diagram of people" living in brownstone Brooklyn and commuting to the museums on the Upper East Side, and she compares the two neighborhoods in ways you might find surprising; how she came to learn who the core demographic for her tours is (hint: she's a modernist); and she shares some memorable anecdotes from her tours featuring both kids and adults.