I am always fascinated to see elder travel groups gathering around contemporary art piece with a young guide to explain art to them. They sometimes seem a little bit out of the place, as being too disciplined and organized for the contemporary art world, which is more free-style, or a better term, messed-up. But this impression may actually be my limited perception to see contemporary art as something new and for the young people. I had forgotten that those elder people were once young and crazy like us now, and some of the most challenging works in contemporary art have their predecessors in early 20^th century.

During the first four weeks in Venice, where visitors of various ages, from all over the world came to participate in the big event of the year, the Venice Biennale, I haven’t noticed many elder people in the exhibition venues. But, in Kassel, I was surrounded by elder people in Fridricianum. In one instance, an old gentleman walked close to an artwork to examine the small text on it with his thick glasses (in the same way my grandpa reads bus schedules on the station wall), and not realized that he had passed though the line that visitors should keep from the artwork. It is such a sweet scene that people approach artwork just like what they do to obtain any information in real life. Art, to that old gentleman is not something on the high altar against the white wall, of something for the young generation, but just a thing he can read for himself. One day, when I was struggling to find the direction with the documenta map, a kind old German lady handed me a cut from local newspaper about a more precise map of documenta sites and used her not so fluent English telling me, this map should be more helpful (and it was!). There are some marks she did on the map of the sites she had visited, and was planning to visit. This is probably one of the sources of the elder art viewers in documenta, people from local community. Their experience of seeing the exhibition should be really different from art tourists like us, as they already knew the city from bones, and considered art viewing as a part of their leisure life.

The tattoo shop for Muester Sculptur Projekt, discount for senior people and the video about the art tour in Muester for elder people is my favorite work in Muester. The elder tourist group went for sightseeing bus, visit contemporary public sculptures, take selfies as sculpture sites, buy art souvenirs in museum store, have a tattoo, and most interestingly talk proudly about the tattoos they had at their breakfast table. Seeing the video early in my art hunt in Muester, I kept comparing myself with them when I visited the public sculptures they did in the video. Even though I don’t take selfies with the sculptures, the way we don’t understand the art, but pretend we appreciate it is almost the same.

Fortunately, I have personally experienced a senior art viewing tour during my stay in Japan with my host mother, who is actually at the age of my grandma, and an art lover. It was a fascinating day, both of the art we saw in that expensive private gallery and the tour with Japanese old ladies. Early in the morning, we arrived more than half an hour earlier to the meeting hall to wait for our guide and the bus to the remote gallery near the famous Mt. Fuji. As we arrived, there are already many people there, and 70 percent of them are old ladies, with their girlfriend groups, husbands or daughters. It was a long bus ride, the guide lady was speaking in the most polite form of Japanese about some Japanese jokes I can’t fully understand. She also sell souvenirs of a traditional Japanese snack that, according to my host mother, is too sour that young people never buy, but is popular among older generations as it is good for their health. The exhibition we were about to see that day is for the 300 anniversary for an famous Edo period landscape and still life painter, Jakuchu, and the signature piece is a exuberantly gold-covered painting of “Peacock and Phoenix”, that was recently rediscovered and restored. When we finally saw the piece, there are many gasps of amazement from our travel group. We were then separated to see the art collections on our own viewing pace. After about 4 hours of art viewing, we went back in to the bus. Everyone looked tired and satisfied. We then drove to an illumination event, awing for the technology of modern life, and then back home. That was the whole boring itinerary of that day, with most of the time on the bus. But it was a personal experience of senior art tourism in Japan, of a living pace I am not used to, and their great concern about the location of the restrooms at every place we stopped during the travel.

In general, old generation art viewers are actually an important part of the audience of art world. They do have their own concerns and interests in the art world.