Observing Art Observers at Aros
WARNING: Unsharp and pornographic pictures can appear in this article! That’s the nature of art!
Observing observers at art museums is fun. Trying to take pictures of them are bit challenging however. First of all, they become very shy if they notice a camera lens pointing in their direction. Second challenge is the (lack of) light in museums. Both color temperature and the dim light can be a challenge.

Today I visited the Aros museum in Århus.

I decided to try to take a few shots. I ended up mounting my XF35mmF2 on the X-T2, cranking up the ISO to 3200, switching to electronic shutter and flipping up the LCD screen to 90 degrees and fixing the view mode to LCD only. That gave me two advantages; I could almost go unnoticed, and I could fix my arms tight to my body. Even with this setup, I had problems getting sharp pictures in the very dim light.

Most of the art at Aros is modern art, but also ‘special’ exhibitions can put art from the beginning of the 20th century in display. Last year an exhibition of Edward Munchs paintings was a huge success. This year, ARoS will be stretching the traditional view of J.F. Willumsen (1863-1958). His powerful paintings created reactions to most of the viewers.

In the basement of Aros, the portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos (b. 1971) shows “installations” of very high quality in the exhibition named ‘Textures of Life’.


I took the “fast track” on the permanent exhibition. Two pieces of art drew my attention; the wall of shame (banks that went bankrupt from 2008 to 2013) and a lightly scratched Lamborghini – the observers took interactively part in creation of this piece of art by scratching the paint…

Other pictures from Aros

