Passing Nick Jonas, the singer of the Jonas Brothers Band fame on a recent jaunt across the Rialto Bridge got me thinking a lot about celebrity.

Particularly, in the context of the art world, aspects of this cultural realm have risen to the status of celebrity. And art tourism is at the center of this. People are fixated on images and experiences that exemplify this art celebrity for their own personal and cultural gain.

Here I will provide just a few examples of instances where art celebrity has been present throughout this trip thus far, though my encounters with this phenomenon have abounded in mass.

The obvious source of celebrity culture within the Venice Biennale is the German pavilion. This year’s Golden Lion winner uses about a dozen performers for a piece called Faust by Anne Imhof.

First and foremost, the pavilion has become a celebrity in its mass popularity at the Biennale. As soon as the gates open at 10:00, people desperate to be at the front of the line run towards the pavilion.

Is this line truly warranted? Or has the idea of the German pavilion become a sort of celebrity that the art world is eager to say they have experienced first-hand. I found the German pavilion to be visceral and easy to react directly to, but also overly aestheticized, especially with the model-celebrity performers, increasing the spectacle nature of the already flashy and instagramable performance.

Not only has the pavilion become a celebrity; the performers themselves have entered the realm of celebrity within the art world. These performers have literally been followed by ‘fans’ throughout Venice, ultimately needing security hired for their walks home.

When inside the German Pavilion, I spent most of my time attempting to watch the performance through a man’s smartphone, raised above the rest of the crowd, as the performance was not viewable with the throngs of people crowding the space. I found this juxtaposition to be laughable. Here I was, in Europe, studying art. And yet I had to watch the famed Imhof performance through a smartphone.

But art celebrity is even more present within older parts of the art world.

When visiting the Ufitzi in Florence, I was extremely bothered and frustrated by the crowds of tourists utilizing this space exclusively for their photo-shoot.

Why does no one stop and really look at Botticelli’s Birth of Venus anymore? I felt star struck by this popular image, having seen it in countless art history classes of mine and plastered on shirts, key-chains, and magnets across Italy. But I could hardly even get a good look at the painting without dodging smartphones or being told to move. The value of truly looking at a work of art up close, and from different angles seems to be lost in these settings. I was asked multiple times to get out of the way so someone could take a photo. I even viewed some people come in, snap a picture, and walk away, not even truly taking in the beauty of such a masterpiece. Art tourism has become so much of getting the most instagramable picture of the most famous art. Celebrated images are reproduced constantly on social media, but how often are the really seen?

Considering this question further is the artist Guan Xiao, included in this years Biennale. Her piece David captivated much of our group’s attention. It is a three-channel video installation exploring how we see in our over-materialized culture. Using images of Michelangelo’s David and reproductions in many forms, these lyrics are heard: “We don’t know how to see him…Only recording but not remembering…”

Xiao points directly to art tourisms focus on recording and capturing moments with famous works of celebrity, but there is no real seeing or remembering. There is almost a fetishization with these celebrity images that people choose to photograph but not really see.

Once again while in Florence, I had the opportunity to see the subject of Xiao’s video, Michelangelo’s David, in person. Being one of the most celebrated images of art in the world, David has risen to a canonized celebrity status.

Most of the Academia, the museum David is housed in, consists of viewers hungry for a selfie with the perfect sculpture of renaissance creation. I even heard people leaving the museum saying, “this is all we needed to see, there is nothing else good here.” Is art only important if it is famous?

David is treated like a real celebrity. Similar to Nick Jonas, with whom my thoughts on this topic began; the desire is to take pictures with him to prove that in fact your status as an art tourist brought you all the way to Italy to see this masterpiece. Meanwhile, in typical celebrity fashion, David‘s face is plastered all across Venice, in every gift shop, and on every item imaginable.

Art tourism worships this celebrity. Like bus tours of Hollywood homes, European trips often feel like the chasing of celebrity images, those that will increase your cultural capital by having the proof, you visited a particular site or work.

Art tourism today seems focused almost entirely on this way of thinking about art as celebrity. So much of modern art and old masterworks are being consumed in this way, and it is harmful for the true importance of art.

By no means am I removed from this form of celebrity culture. Celebrities abound in Europe. Every new museum we go to has a work of immense importance that leaves me feeling like I’ve been in the presence of someone famous. I felt star struck upon seeing Artemisia Gentileski’s Judith Beheading Holofernes and literally gaped at a favorite altarpiece by Chimabue. Even when performers at the German Pavilion passed our group eating lunch, we looked, whispered amongst ourselves, and congratulated them on a job well done.

My behavior in these moments was not too far from my reaction upon seeing of Nick Jonas nights ago at Rialto. But it is critical that art tourists specifically take a step back, and a step closer, really learning how to look at art, not through the lens of the camera, but through their own two eyes.