A small social experiment

October 7th, 2025

It was a small social experiment. I was in the Prado in Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings room. And there I’ve seen the "Garden of Earthly Delights" with my eyes. And it was underwhelming, partly because I had seen this painting in detail on a computer screen many times, but mostly because of the huge horde of people in front of it. Pushing, getting in the way, constantly talking. Just awful. To make something good out of it, I had the rest of the room and Bosch’s paintings mostly to myself. Even "The Haywain" gathered only a few glances. And right there, to the left of the entrance, there was a table painting of "Seven Deadly Sins and Four Final Things," that was overlooked in the same way. And in my opinion, that is the ultimate and the best work by Bosch, mostly because it is realistically uncomfortable. So after I got my fill of this painting, I stood aside and counted. One in ten people walking into the gallery took even a glance at it, and one in twenty actually went over to see it. That is a pretty terrible thing, but unfortunately, relatable to any visit to the main museum in the world. There are too many people in those museums, people who don’t want to be there, who are bored or just checking up the list of what somebody else told them to see, or looking at the information plaque to see the name of the artist to check if they can recognize the name, and then leaving without looking at the painting. Terrible.