Can I Touch this?

 Do want more millennials in your fusty old halls? Have you thought about playing music in your museum exhibitions?

Museums used to be follow the Bruce Springsteen theory of display outlined in his early manifesto, 'The River' Track 9 - You Can Look (But You'd Better Not Touch)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbd5IexmTX4

Be sure to blast this out to protect your new open storage decorative art loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum.

More generally, MC Hammer's U Can't Touch This, can be sampled through touch pads if visitors get close to your objects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otCpCn0l4Wo

But museums have moved towards a more inclusive and, dare I say it, touching approach. What would be appropriate?

Open the doors to Diana Ross' Touch Me In The Morning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxZRdxrP0Vo

If your museum have sleepovers, how about

Kathy Dennis Touch Me (All Night Long)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rPSQweDPmI

I think a more strident approach encouraging visitors to handle objects is needed in the early stages and many modern beat combos can instruct us to 'Touch'. Here is a small sample

The Supremes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXLUND2kCPA

Natasha Bedingfield

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOa4axPVHEc

Daft Punk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljQdZEMs31g

Shift K3Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KtYYHKEGDc

That should cover a range of tastes.

For the braver museum, how about asking visitors to actually handle your objects. What can you offer them aurally. Robyn's Handle Me is a good place to start

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4UHNhVSrEM

or Fleetwood Mac's Hold Me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAbfPDZdEBU

For the more anxious the Travelling Wilburys Handle With Care may offer an easy way in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8s9dmuAKvU

Or Tori Amos' Precious Things

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Croz1_USr3U

What about tunes to avoid? Top of my list would be The Damned's Smash It Up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux1Za8Wmz_s

Nick Lowe's I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80A26-uo-CA

and the ultimate in cultural destructive nihilism, Joy Division, Atrocity Exhibition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3suV4k7gF0


Listen, enjoy, relax, open up those cabinets and let the handling begin