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What is a museum? What does the word "museum" mean to you personally?

TAYANA: I think a museum is a place that houses certain components of culture or history or art, something that has been created that has a lot of value and that we want to share with the broader community, with the public, something that people should know about that can enrich their lives, that can educate them, that can inspire them, because we have different kinds of museums. But overall, I think the point of a museum is to carry some kind of value into the lives of people, enrich their lives in some way through education or inspiration or just experiencing something that maybe they don't have access to in their day-to-day lives but that is still very valuable.

ERIC: Yes. And what was your first experience with going to museums?

TAYANA: My most memorable experience of museums from childhood is when I went to the Chicago Museum of Art, and on the basement level, there's these incredible miniature houses from throughout history, like three-dimensional, very detailed miniature homes from the 1900s, 1800s, kind of what a typical home would look like. And I love miniature things. So seeing that was just incredible for me, the level of skill and passion it takes to create something like that. And even as a child, I was just so enamored with what they created and what they put on display for all of us to see. And every time we went to that museum, I would insist that we go — because I think it's a permanent exhibit — that we go and we see the three-dimensional homes, the miniatures, and I just was so inspired by them to create art myself. I remember around that same time period of my life, I was doing little clay miniatures because I was trying to emulate what I saw.

And so for me, the experience of that museum was that it inspired me and it made me want to be also creative and artistic. And I think that's one of the great magics of museums.

ERIC: Do you remember how old you were, approximately, when you saw this?

TAYANA: I think I was probably 9, 8 or 9.

ERIC: So you were bringing in sort of maybe old enough to have play pretend with dolls and toys and things like that and all of a sudden it's art.

TAYANA: Yes.

ERIC: There's something that is art that's in a museum.

TAYANA: Yes, it was elevated. So it's not just play anymore, it's in a museum, so that gives it a sense of a weight and prestige. It's not just something that I'm doing for fun. It's something that actually has real value. If you continue with it and you become really good at it, it can be elevated. It could have a platform to be shared with other people. I thought that was really incredible.

ERIC: You talk a lot about how the design of our cities affects us, how it affects our feelings, our moods, our psychology. What does a museum do for a city? What does that mean when you put a museum in the context of a bigger organism like a city?

TAYANA: We often talk about landmarks and focal points in cities. So I like to think of it as a city is sort of like a web or a network. And in a typical web or network, you have your lines and then you have your nodes. So your lines are like your streets, your connections, and your nodes are the things that you walk to or drive to. They're the destinations, they're the places you end up at. It could be a big main square, for example, if we're talking about a public space, but it can also be something like a museum, a destination that you go towards and that you end up at and you spend time there. So the museums in our cities are some of the main nodes and thus the important ... I like to say the gems and the crown of the city. So you might spend a day walking and exploring and walking around the connections, the lines of the network, and then you end up at that node and spend some hours there.

And it's kind of like a feeling of fulfillment that, after your journey, you end up at something that's really incredible and multifaceted like a museum.

ERIC: Ideally then it brings you to other maybe unexpected nodes, other things that are kind of more serendipitous as part of the city organism.

TAYANA: Yes. Especially if, for example, in a well-designed city, that node, that museum, would not be standing alone in a sea of parking lots or empty streets. It would be sort of the heart of the space. And so around it, you would have other valuable and interesting places kind of feeding into it and feeding off of it, feeding off of that energy. Because when you have a node, a destination, you have a lot of foot traffic, you have a lot of people going there. So if you have a lot of foot traffic and people in that area, then logically the best thing to do is put more things around it so the people who are already there can then go to those other secondary destinations. And then whether they're businesses, they can patronize businesses or they can go to cafes or public squares to play.

But it's sort of the hub or the heart, I would say the nexus of the space is that focal point, that destination, like a museum. And then it has ripple effects around it that energize the rest of the space.

ERIC: Now, you grew up in the U.S. suburbs, right? And then you lived for a time in Spain?

TAYANA: Yes.

ERIC: I was wondering if you could speak to the difference in museums in Europe versus the U.S., cities versus suburbs. I know there's a lot of variables here at play. I suspect that where the museum is, who builds it, and the culture around the museum drastically changes. I assume it's quite different in these different types of places.

TAYANA: For sure. I think that the way that the museums are handled, it really impacts the character of the city and the experience of being in the city. And Barcelona is a great example because some of Barcelona's most famous museums are actually the houses, the buildings, that the famous architect Antoni Gaudi built. So he built these homes that were lived in. They're normal homes, they're integrated into the main streets. They're just like once they were a normal building and now they are a museum because they're so exceptional and beautiful and interesting. He's so famous for his creative way of designing structures that those structures he created are now used and not to be lived in, but to be visited. And they're the most popular museums in Barcelona. And they're right in the center and they're also just embedded into the streetscape. So it's not a building that it looks like a museum, it's a building that looks like a building — a beautiful and interesting one, sure, but it still melds into the street.

ERIC: It looks ordinary.

TAYANA: It's very much integrated. It's very integrated. And so you see a huge line of people lining up to this museum that also is integrated into the streetscape. And I find that very interesting because it also means that the museum experience is very smoothly integrated into the experience of just being out and about in the city and on the street. You're walking past a cafe, a store, and then boom, a museum. It's very much seamless. And so it makes it also seamless to experience the museum aspect of whether it's a visit or whether you're living there, it's not like something you really necessarily have to go out of your way or make a day around because it's just right in the heart of the city. It's just a part of the streetscape and the center. And so I think that that makes it more accessible. Whereas if it's a building that has to be gone to specifically, you have to kind of make a whole day around it.

For example, in Chicago where I grew up, a lot of the buildings, a lot of the museums, they're incredible. They're huge museums, but a lot of them, even when they're in the center, they're kind of separate from the downtown area. They're not really woven into it. Some of them are. The Chicago Museum of Art is very much within the downtown, but there's some other ones, like for example, I think it's the Museum of Science and Industry that are some ways away and you have to kind of navigate a sea of parking, drive there. And it just doesn't feel as seamless to go, if you're going to Chicago, to go to that museum. You kind of have to make your day around going to that museum. And so those are two different experiences. They have pros and cons because, for example, while the Barcelona museums, those Gaudi buildings, are fairly compact, the museum in Chicago that I mentioned is enormous.

So you have a different experience of museum life. You have the one that's a little bit more fine-grained and then you have one that's sort of like ba-boom. It's its own world, in a sense. So it's good to have that variety.

ERIC: Well yeah, I mean this is something that you talk about a lot, which is human-scale design for cities. Can you define what "human scale" means just in a general kind of urbanism sense?

TAYANA: Yeah. So I would define human scale to mean that the city or whatever the case may be, the community, the town, the suburb, is designed in a way where it reflects and adapts to human abilities, human physical abilities, and human typical needs and desires, likes, and wants. So if you want to design a human-scale place, you have to think about, okay, what are humans on average able to do physically? What do they on average like to do? What do they on average need? The average human, for example, when they walk, what radius of space can they reach within a 10-minute walk? Because after around 10 minutes of walking, if they haven't reached their destination, maybe they get frustrated. And that's very common. If you need to reach someplace and it's further than a 15-minute walk, you probably won't want to walk there. You maybe want to bike there or drive there.

It gets a little bit inconvenient if it's past the 15-minute radius of walking. 15-minute cities means that everything that you might need or want on a daily basis is within that 15-minute radius of walking so you can reach it easily. It's convenient. And then so that's kind of like the physical aspect. And also you have the mental aspect and the emotional aspect, which is, for example, what do people like to see if they're walking? If that walk, that 15-minute walk, is really dull, really boring, all I see is blank walls and cars zooming past me, then actually my tolerance is lower. I don't want to walk 15 minutes. Actually that's too long.

ERIC: It's going to feel like a longer walk. Yeah.

TAYANA: I actually want to walk less time because it's boring and it's not pleasant or enjoyable. But if that walk is lined with shops and cafes and gardens and there's a lot of other people because it's an interesting place, I'm more willing to walk further, actually.

I'm happy to walk 30 minutes to my destination then. So we have to think about what people also like, what stimulates their brains, what makes them happy, what's pleasurable for them, and also what they need. Because if you're walking, the average person needs a few different things. For example, they need places to sit. So many people, maybe they have physical disabilities or they're older and they need to rest at regular intervals, or even they might be able-bodied but they just need to tie their shoe or have a snack or go on a phone call. It's normal for a person to want to sit down when they're walking, every 10 minutes or so, for whatever reason. So people in general need to sit. They don't like when the sun's beating down on them. One, they don't like it; two, it's dangerous. You can have a heat stroke if it's too sunny and hot.

So we need to have shade. So if we're expecting people to walk, we need to have shady places for them to walk. And then they also might need refreshment. People get tired and they get thirsty and they get hungry at regular intervals throughout the day. We eat like five or six times throughout the day when you count snacking and drinking. So there needs to be places to eat and drink. All those considerations about the physical needs of the human body and also the mental and psychological/emotional needs, when we think about those and then we design them into the environment, then that environment becomes people centric, human centric, because it's designed for the person.

ERIC: Yeah. I have two thoughts on this. One is that you mentioned the ba-boom type of museum, one that's big and it's imposing. It looks very out of the ordinary, unlike the ones in Barcelona. So part of me is like some aspect, some amount of the effect of the museum, is [that] you're going to a special space, someplace that feels special. So that's one aspect of it. And the other though I had is that I think if you had to rank things that are most important to have in a 15-minute city, I would rather have easy access to cafes and to grocery stores and to banks and to libraries. Those feel like those are more essential everyday needs for a walkable city. So maybe it doesn't matter that the museums are harder to get to. What are your thoughts on that?

TAYANA: That's a good point. It's a question of frequency. So the things I mentioned before — eating, drinking, sitting down — those are things we do frequently throughout the day. So naturally we should have more of those kinds of places, more places to eat, drink, and sit. We don't go normally to multiple museums a day. So it makes sense to have few of them with further distances between them. They don't have to be on every walk from A to B. That's okay. But that's also part of the value of the museum is that it is a special experience and we need those kinds of experiences in our day. So our day is something that can be pleasurable and enjoyable in a variety of ways, but still it's mundane. The rhythm of life is fairly standard and predictable and that's fine, that's wonderful, that creates a sense of stability and comfort, but occasionally we do want a special experience. We do want something that is unique from our normal humdrum of daily life, and the museum provides that.

ERIC: The big question that I'm trying to answer in this podcast is why do we love museums? Why are we going to them now in an era when we can get so much stuff on our phones at home? We have access to any piece of art basically that's ever been created. Almost any piece of art, you could see a picture of it on your phone. And yet I made a whole day of going to the de Young when their Monet in Venice exhibit opened. It was important for me to go to the physical place to see those real paintings. And so I was wondering if you could talk a bit about our relationship with technology and the stimulation that it provides. Could you talk about why people default to their phones and then why they might opt to go someplace else, why they would go to a place like a museum?

TAYANA: For sure. So I think that in general, people go on their phones to fulfill certain needs and wants. For example, the need to be stimulated. We want to see interesting things. Our brains are a very complex organic machine so they need constant stimuli to process a novelty. And that's what we get from our phones when it's not available in our surroundings. Many people live in places that are perhaps not very interesting or the interesting things aren't easy to access or they're too expensive, so there's a cost barrier, but their brains still crave stimulation and interesting experiences. So what do their brains do? They seek that out in whatever way it's available. And nowadays, in the 21st century, that's in our phones, on our screens. Everything, like you said, is on technology. The problem is that what we see online, it's not equivalent to what we can experience in the real world because what we see online is one or two dimensional versus five dimensional, like the five senses in the real world.

You only see or hear something when you consume it from the phone, like a video you only see and hear. You don't smell, you can't touch or taste anything. It's only a limited amount of senses that are engaged. Also, you can't really co-create it. You're just consuming it. You're absorbing it, you're watching a video on TikTok, but you're not co-creating it. Whereas when you're out in the real world, you're co-creating that experience because when you do something, the world responds to you. You can move something and then somebody can have a reaction to that and move it back or have a conversation with you. It's a very multilevel, multifaceted experience. It's more interesting and your brain is more active in different ways. So it's very different than what we get online. What we get online is very simple, it's very instant, it's very superficial. I like to compare it to junk food where junk food is also, in a sense, something that feeds us, but it doesn't give us any nutritional value.

So we can eat it when we're hungry, it's easy to acquire, it's usually cheap, it's tasty, it gives us some satisfaction, but because it doesn't offer us real nutritional value, it doesn't really fill that hole, that gap, that hunger. And it's the same thing with the world and our phones. That's the same kind of relationship we see. We have this hunger, this craving, this desire. We can't fulfill it in the real world if it's not available to us, if it's not built into the environment. So we fulfill it with our technology, with our screens, but what we get from our screens really isn't enough. It's not what we were craving. It's not the real thing. And even if we don't actively consciously realize that, we do have a sense of it. It feels like, oh, I'm still hungry. I'm not satisfied. That's why we need the real-world experience.

We need to actually go and see it in person and feel it and be with other people in that space and maybe have conversations with them, get closer to see the texture of the paintings, be able to walk around, speak with the people who work there who are knowledgeable about the art. All of those levels of experience are very satisfying and interesting, and we can't get that online. We can't get that through a screen.

ERIC: And crucially, in my case, eavesdrop on what other people are saying about the art.

TAYANA: Always fun.

ERIC: That's also part of the museum experience, for sure.

TAYANA: Always fun, yeah.

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There are some folks, though, who say that we should be using technology more as part of the museum-going experience, right? Who say there should be interactive aspects of any exhibit. Maybe we should be using our phones to do a guided tour.

I think at that de Young exhibit that I mentioned, I think Anthropic, the creators of Claude, had some sort of side exhibit where you could talk to a similacra of Claude Monet or something like that. It was something weird. I didn't do it. But how do you feel about the way that museums either currently use technology or sort of this idea that maybe we should be using it more in museums?

TAYANA: I think technology is very broad. There's a lot of different ways that we can embed it into every aspect of life. Doesn't mean we should, but we can, and there are great ways to do it. If the technology is emphasizing or enhancing the original creation in some way, I think it could be something beautiful. For example, a lot of cities now are doing this thing where they project art onto the walls of a space. For example, in Las Vegas, in Japan, in Barcelona, there's this ... In Japan, I think it's called Team Labs. And then there's variations of it, basically where it's like projections onto the walls of this dark building and you walk through it and it feels three dimensional. When I went to one in Las Vegas, it was projections of paintings, but those paintings were kind of brought out of their frames and it felt like you were inside of the painting.

ERIC: So they adapted a two-dimensional painting, made it 3D and more —

TAYANA: Yeah.

ERIC: Okay.

TAYANA: It made you feel like you were inside of the painting, walking around it, and maybe some of the characters in the painting were moving. They still looked like their original versions, but they were alive, in a sense. So it respected the original art by keeping the visuals all the same, but it breathed new life into it through the power of technology. I think that's an interesting way to incorporate technology into art. And it also attracts new audiences, younger audiences. It gets younger people interested in art who maybe think that going to a museum is sort of an outdated thing. This is a way to put that same art in front of them in a fresh way. And so it also gives them contact with that art, which is valuable. So there's many different ways to do that, I think, but there's also ways that maybe take away from the experience of the original creation, and then I don't think that it really adds much value. Or maybe it doesn't take away, but it doesn't really contribute anything in particular or it tries to do something that doesn't quite land, but that's okay. It's a trial-and-error thing.

But I think the important thing for technology is to appreciate and respect the original creation and the original creator. Nowadays we're seeing a lot of — you even mentioned it — you can speak to the artist, something like that. I personally don't like that idea because that was a human being and that human being did not consent to have their identity sort of hijacked by technology and to say things that maybe they wouldn't have said or to have conversations that they wouldn't have had. I'm not personally a fan of that just because it takes something from someone who can't consent to their identity being taken and used that way. So one, it's not authentic, and two, it's just not fair to that person. But there's a lot of nuance.

ERIC: And that's distinct, I guess, from having a placard, having a tour guide, having someone who's adding context kind of on the margins, like an outside of the art as opposed to representing "this is the artist," the ghost in the machine. Yeah.

TAYANA: If it's something the artist said, if it's we know the artist said that, and then they have, let's say, a visual of the artist that speaks through the power of technology so you can see them saying that thing that we know that they said, maybe that's more okay.

ERIC: Can we talk a bit about third places? This is something that I know you care a lot about.

TAYANA: Yeah.

ERIC: First, maybe let's define what is a third place?

TAYANA: A third place is a place where you go to relax or connect with people or just kind of be yourself. And it's best understood in the context of the first and second place. So Ray Oldenberg was the creator of this concept, and he described it in this way: where the first place is your home, the second place is your job, and the third place is the place that you go outside of work or home where you can do the other things that you like to do on a regular basis, such as relax, unwind, meet with friends, have a drink, or a small pleasure, like a pastry, something tasty. He talks about the tripod, the third leg of the tripod of life. You need all three legs in order for you to have a stable, healthy, happy life experience. And so the third place is essential to being healthy and happy because you need to have a place where you can just relax, be yourself, have fun, connect with friends, meet new people, etc.

And importantly, he also explained that it has to have a low barrier to entry, which means the third place has to either be free or it should be affordable. So most people should be able to afford to go to it every day. So it needs to have a low financial barrier to entry, for example, like the cost of a small coffee. Unfortunately, nowadays —

ERIC: Not in San Francisco. (laugh)

TAYANA: That's crazy. The price of a small coffee on average in San Francisco is $6. So that makes third places kind of hard to come by. Not only that, but the majority of cafes in San Francisco and other cities in America close at like 3:00 or 4:00 PM, whereas work lets out at 5:00 or later. So how are people supposed to experience those places?

ERIC: Yes.

TAYANA: So it's very difficult to find a third place these days.

ERIC: Especially if you are not a drinker or if you just don't want to default to alcohol as your nonwork activity.

TAYANA: Even if you do want a drink, nowadays the price of a drink at a bar, it's incredibly high. And also higher-end bars with higher prices fall out of the category of third places because they're not accessible and because when it's higher end, there's more expectations of behavior, whereas a third place should be casual. And so in terms of alcohol, a pub is considered a third place, whereas a more higher-end bar isn't.

ERIC: Right. One of the ideas that I'm pulling on with this show is I'm investigating whether museums could be third places. What do you think about that idea? What is maybe getting in the way, that [is] preventing museums from fulfilling this need in our societies?

TAYANA: I think one of the important parts of third places, which I touched on earlier, is that there aren't really expectations of behavior there that are particularly rigid. So you kind of have more freedom of behavior. Of course, there's always rules and social norms about how you should behave. For example, you can't go shouting, even if you're at a cafe, you can't speak too loudly and disturb other patrons. But in general, it's more casual and you kind of have some freedom of behavior. In museums, though, there are more rules. You have to be quiet and respectful. You have to follow a predetermined path through the rooms. You can't really touch the art or interact with it too much. It's a bit more limiting. There's kind of expectations for how you should experience the museum, which makes it less of a third place. That doesn't mean it can't be, though.

I think that museums can be third places if they create spaces or halls where, for example, the limitations on behavior are lifted a little bit. It's more in museums, there's often areas that are specific to children where you're allowed to touch things. You're allowed to touch, you're allowed to play, you're allowed to sit. There's movable parts and you're invited to engage with the art. That kind of a space is more likely to be a third place just because you have more freedom of behavior and you can kind of relax and not have to worry about breaking something or doing something wrong. I think that that's one way that we can create parts of a museum that are more third-space friendly. Also, another way that I've seen it done is there's cafes in museums. For example, there's a fantastic cafe in London in the, I think it's the Albert and Victoria Museum, which is free. And then there's a wonderful cafe in it that you can just go as a cafe, you don't have to go to the museum, you can just go get a pastry or a drink and it's beautiful and it's fairly noisy.

You don't have to be quiet. It's just a very standard cafe. And then if you want to, you can go to the museum as well. So the fact that the third place is within the museum means that it's more likely that you will be inspired to visit the museum before or after. So that's a great way to combine the two. And then the third way I would say that you can make a museum more of a third place or third-place friendly is if you let the soul of the museum or whatever is being displayed within the museum spill out into the outside, into the public realm. And we do see a lot of museums do this where they'll put an exhibit on the sidewalk in front of the museum or they'll have their grounds and on the grounds that are in public, they'll put certain photographs or sculptures or something that represents an exhibit going on inside and makes you curious, and that way they get more people to visit the museum.

But also they give the public access to the museum's insides, which maybe they don't normally have access to or if there's like a ticket that they can't afford, they can still experience the museum outside in some way. And if there's seating and refreshments, for example, then you have a third place.

ERIC: One of the classic examples of a third place is the bowling alley. "Bowling Alone" is the Putnam book. And the idea is that after work, you'd be going to this place, you'd be playing a game. And bowling is very specifically great for socialization because you're taking your turn, you're sitting down in different combinations, you're interacting with a lot of people in a very small amount of time, but also bowling is really loud. And as you said, museums are really quiet by default. How can a museum or another institution of cultural heritage, how can they encourage socialization, encourage people to be interacting with one another and to be having this sort of, I don't want to say forced community, but really nudging people towards community in the way that a bowling league does?

TAYANA: I think one of the best ways to do that is through programming. If they have programming which invites certain groups of people in to do a particular activity, and then it will attract people who like that activity, and then they'll naturally have something to bond over, break the ice, and they can meet like-minded people. For example, in New York City, in one of the art museums, they had a sketching activity or a drawing activity where, in one of the halls between the exhibits, they had paper and pencils and sketch pads, and then people who liked art or drawing were invited to just sit down and draw. And so it was a room full of people sprawled out on the floor or on beanbag chairs or on tables. All of them were sharing pencils and drawing each other or drawing certain artworks that they'd seen. It was a very casual, relaxed environment and very easy to start a conversation with somebody or say, "Oh, I love what you're drawing. What inspired you?"

It creates an environment where it's easy to connect with people because you already see that that person has a shared hobby, a shared interest as you, like drawing. And so you have immediately something you can talk about and bond over. So programming is a good way to do it. There's all different kinds of programming. It could be programming that's really art focused. It could even be something like a concert, invite people to dance or even teach them a particular dance from a certain country. And then you have, again, breaking the ice because people see that it's okay to interact with each other. One of the biggest barriers to people connecting with strangers is that they don't know if it's okay. And they don't know if they're bothering somebody by going up to them and starting to talk with them. In a normal environment, even in a coffee shop, you don't know if that person's there to work, to study, to be alone with their thoughts.

And so you don't want to bother them. But if you have programming where the idea is to do something fun and interactive, then you go into it knowing that that's acceptable and that's expected.

ERIC: What do we know about the difference in psychology of talking to a stranger in one of these programs, in one of these real-world environments, as opposed to talking to them online? Are those two things very different?

TAYANA: Yeah. I mean, it's totally different. And I think that that's ... One of the issues with technology right now, I would say, is that it makes you feel like you are connecting and communicating, but it's such a different beast from what it means to really communicate with a person in the real world. It's such a different experience what you do on your phone on a messaging app or on Instagram direct messaging. What you do there is completely different from the experience of speaking to a person in vivo, in the real world.

ERIC: Yeah. Even if you don't know nothing about them, even give way less information about them.

TAYANA: Exactly. That's even harder to do.

ERIC: Yes.

TAYANA: It's even harder to connect with someone that you know nothing about because there's all these different things that you have to navigate in order to make them feel comfortable, in order to keep the conversation pleasant, because that person may have a very different personality from you, may have very different opinions from you. You don't know anything about them. And so in order to create a connection, a bond with them, you have to be able to navigate those differences in a respectful way. And that is difficult to do when the internet puts those people kind of in opposition to each other, like on Twitter or whatever. The things that go viral are usually extreme opinions or extreme ideas that get people angry, they create friction and they have people in the comments arguing, fighting. But if you meet somebody in the real world at an art event or at a concert and they say something that you don't agree with, you can't get angry and confrontational with them because that's just not the way that it works with human connection.

People are all different and just because you have some sort of difference in opinion doesn't mean that it's acceptable for you to become angry or aggressive in your conversation. You have to keep the peace. You have to be harmonious. And that's a big part of coexistence with different kinds of people is that you have to be able to coexist with people who are different from you and navigate tricky conversations. Even if it's someone who you don't agree with, you have to show them respect, you have to hear them out, you have to have patience and tolerance. All of those skills are something that needs to be practiced in order to be mastered. And if the only way that we're encountering those situations is online where everybody's protected by anonymity and so there's no consequence to being confrontational or aggressive, then you don't learn, you can't do that.

You can't do that in the real world because in the real world there is consequences for acting that way in a disrespectful manner because that person will get upset. They'll get upset, maybe they'll get angry, they might get sad. They'll give you feedback that is uncomfortable and it just creates a lot of friction. Online, there's no real consequence because you're protected by layers and layers and layers of anonymity and distance. You're not really in contact with what happens after you say something that's maybe a bit tricky. Whereas in the real world you have to immediately respond and so you have to be able to manage it and you have to know what's the best way to cushion certain things you say or how to manage your expressions or your body language when you hear something that you don't like. It's a very complex process and it's not something that you can teach someone or that you can take a course on.

It's something that you learn with practice. So I talk often about the plasticity of the brain and how people who grew up in an environment where third places are abundant and they have constant interactions with strangers, they learn naturally all these processes of communication because that's just life for them. And so when they become adults, it's very easy for them to speak with anybody. Whereas people who don't have access to a lot of third places and situations where they encounter strangers and they do all of that on the screen, on the phone, they don't learn those mechanisms for communication. They don't master them and then they feel uncomfortable and anxious and stressed when faced with those situations in the real world. So we need more third places to give people that practice.

ERIC: Is there something that you think museums can learn from the way cities are designed — good cities are designed — that they can apply to make the experience better for their patrons?

TAYANA: I think that the way that the museum flows can certainly be inspired by a city that flows well, because a museum can be very confusing to navigate and you might have your map or screens that help you get into certain wings, but the best way to get people flowing through a museum is by establishing good principles of urban design, which is the way that the paths are set, having focal points. Because a lot of the times when people navigate a space, they don't think about cardinal directions — east, west, north, south — they think about themselves in relation to a certain focal point they saw. So when you have focal points set up like a big sculpture at a certain intersection, a key intersection, and then that helps people navigate and know, oh, okay, I was there before, I'm going to go that way now. So basically making the museum intuitive to navigate, which is also something we talk about is super important for cities. Cities should be intuitive to navigate. You should have a sense of where to go even if you're not looking at your map because it should feel natural to go in that direction.

And we can do that by designing, for example, the level of detail. When you're at a fork in the road and you see one street that has a lot of things going on there, a lot of storefronts, a lot of street trees and flowers and benches and awnings, and then you have one where it has less of those things, you're much more likely to go in the direction with more things. When you have a higher density of detail and goings on that attracts direction of foot traffic. If you want people to go in a certain direction, then you have to make it appealing to go in that direction through the addition of features and details that are engaging and appealing to them. So the same happens in museums. If you want people to go in a certain direction, then put something there that catches their eye that they want to see closer up and then that'll move them naturally in that direction like a magnet. So it's a lot about those kinds of subconscious aspects of flow. I think a good example to also look to is the mall, the American mall.

ERIC: Really?

TAYANA: Yeah. So the American mall is very expertly designed to make the average visitor move through it in a way where they cover the maximum amount of surface area so that they see the maximum amount of stores and shop in more places. So it's actually very calculated how the stores are set up, how the common areas are set up, how the escalators are set up so that, for example, there's not escalators in convenient places, there's escalators in places where perhaps you are forced to do a full circle before you reach it. And that way you see more storefronts and you shop more. So it's very strategically designed, the average mall, in a way that increases profit. But if you have a different motivation — for example, increasing the visibility of art — you can still use those same principles, but just with a different goal.

ERIC: One time my partner and I, we were in Greece and we went to the archeology museum in Heraklion, on Crete, and it was like going through an Ikea. We were going through this linear path of all this ancient pottery, more pottery, more pottery. And we were like, yes, it's incredible it's preserved, and we are learning about history, but we were so tired. By the time we got to the second half of the museum, we were going faster and we were not appreciating the full scope of what the museum had to offer because it didn't really encourage us to move in a way that was human scale or that was conducive to the amount of energy that we had.

TAYANA: And you felt trapped, probably.

ERIC: Not exactly trapped, but it's more that we reached the second half of the museum where they're getting to more modern history and we felt like we didn't have the same level of energy. Honestly, we should've just stopped for a coffee. It's really partly on us.

TAYANA: But that's also a great point. If you're going to have that kind of a design where a person has to be walking a long, long time, in order to increase their endurance, you have to offer them refreshment areas, rest areas, so that they have the energy to continue and to see the rest of it. So those are things that we have to think about when we want to direct the movement of foot traffic. Okay, this person has been walking a while. We have to think about that. So what are they going to want to do after that long walk if we want them to continue walking? So all those aspects need to be thought about.

ERIC: And reversing the previous question, what can cities learn from museums? Are there any design principles that we can take from the way the museums are laid out or the way they do programming that can help build a better city?

TAYANA: Well, I think that one of the main issues we have with cities, especially modern cities, I mean, maybe this is a little bit too on the nose, a little bit too obvious, but it's the lack of beauty. The lack of beauty, it's the lack of art. So what museums do is they appreciate and their existence is because they understand that people love beauty.

People love creativity. People love seeing it. They're willing to pay money to see it. That's something that cities need to understand. People like looking at beautiful things. People will pay more money to be surrounded by beauty. That's why we have museums. So a city should also incorporate those concepts. It should incorporate beauty. It should incorporate visual interest, cultural enrichment, because that's what people like. If you have a city that offers none of that, it's just glass walls and concrete and steel and featureless buildings, people don't like that. They don't like that. And I think that a lot of modern architecture, a lot of modern urban planning, is designed with the value system of architects or certain subsets of urbanists or planners that have a certain vision of utopia or futuristic, whatever the case may be. And they lose track of the fact that a city is for the people.

So a city should be designed with what the people like in mind, what the people want in mind. And so when we have conversations about the way modern cities look and feel, most people, the average person will usually say, "Cities are so ugly these days. Why do we have all of these oddly shaped oblong buildings or rectangular towers? This isn't pretty." And then a more sophisticated architect will say, "Ahaha, you understand nothing. This is actually very elevated and sophisticated." It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter from a philosophical or intellectual standpoint, this is groundbreaking art. This building is part of the public realm. It is meant to serve the public. It's not just an expression of your artistic sensibility as the architect. It's not a statue that is supposed to just serve you and what you believe is beautiful or interesting or sophisticated. It's supposed to be something that can enrich the lives of the public because it's those people who will be seeing it every single day and it's a very important component of their life.

So it can't be designed in a selfish way. It has to be designed in a way where it resonates with the people who live there, which means it has to embody something of the culture of the place. And there's ways to do that in creative and novel ways. You can use those principles or you can take those elements of art and history and shape them in new and modern ways that's creative, that's groundbreaking, but still keep the essence true to itself. You still keep the personality and identity of the city and the people within the building's design. But we see very little of that nowadays. We just see these buildings and nobody understands why they were designed that way, what's the value of them, and then it causes a lot of frustration. And so I think what cities can learn from museums is that people like beautiful things and people want to be surrounded by beautiful things. It's really not a concept that should be hard to grasp, yet here we are.

ERIC: All right. We are wrapping up here, but we have a very important question we need to answer, which is, imagine that you are in a museum and, most importantly, you are in a museum gift shop. What do you buy in the gift shop?

TAYANA: I love the museum gift shops. I love the museum gift shops because you can take a piece of history with you. You can take a piece of the museum home with you. I find that so fascinating. And usually they have some of the most amazing souvenirs in the whole city you'll find in the museum gift shops. I was in a museum in Vienna and oh, I wish I could remember the name, but it was a very difficult name. It's the name of this artist that had this very unique style, a little bit surrealist, a little bit Picasso-esque. Anybody who's been to Vienna knows what I'm talking about. The museum itself is very beautiful and interesting. It looks like the Gaudi museums in Barcelona.

ERIC: I did some digging after the podcast, and I’m pretty sure this this is the KunstHausWien in Vienna, which features the work of Friedensreich Hundertwasser. And let me just say, this place looks cool as hell. I’ll put a link in the show notes.

TAYANA: In the gift shop, there was these sticker books where you could create a visual building or work of art that imitated his style by having ...

So the stickers were basically patterns that he used often or motifs or components and colors that he would use a lot. And so you can kind of mix and match those to create your own work of art that sort of imitated his work of art. And I found that to be so much fun and so interesting because you feel like you're really engaging with the way he thought and the way he created and you got a better understanding of why he used those colors and patterns. So that was the last thing I think I bought at a museum gift shop, and I think that was so creative and I would probably buy another one if I saw it again.

ERIC: Last question for you. I think you've said that Barcelona is your favorite city in the world, is that right?

TAYANA: Yes.

ERIC: What is your favorite museum in the world that you've been to?

TAYANA: Oh, that's such a good question. My favorite museum ... I mean, I'm probably going to be very cliché, but I do love the Louvre.

ERIC: Nothing wrong with that.

TAYANA: It's just so big and there's just so much in there and just so ... You can spend a whole day there. You have sculptures and paintings. And I love the way it's ... the place it's located in Paris.

I think something I talk about often about Paris, what I love about Paris is the way that it lays out its landmarks because you can see them from afar. For example, when you're at the museum, the Louvre, from its grounds, you can see the Eiffel Tower and you can see other features. And if you walk straight out of it, you'll pass through the Tuileries Gardens and you'll go up the Champs-Élysées into the Arc de Triomphe. So the way that the focal points and the landmarks are laid out and connected by the Grand Boulevard so that you're naturally flowing between them and can see them and navigate them from the perspective of the other one, I think is so brilliant. It's so genius. It feeds into that concept of the intuitive city where you don't even need a map because from here I can see my next destination, and then the path from A to B is a magnificent street in itself, so I'm just naturally flowing through the city in the best possible way because it's designed so well. So because of not only the experience of the Louvre internally, but also the way it's situated and its relationship to the other landmarks and streets in Paris, I would choose that one.

ERIC: Another thing about the Louvre, someone told me that it has a McDonald's.

TAYANA: Does it?

ERIC: This is what I've been told.

TAYANA: I think this is new.

ERIC: And so future season of Call 'Em Like Museum, I got to have the budget to go to Paris and do a profile of the Louvre McDonald's, I think.

TAYANA: I'm sure it's also beautiful because —

ERIC: I suspect so, right?

TAYANA: I think I was once in a Paris McDonald's and it was magnificent inside.

ERIC: (laugh)

TAYANA: It had no relation to our version of McDonald's, which is fascinating how they adapt it to their culture. And that's another thing we talked about. It should reflect the people and the context in order to really have value.

ERIC: Well, that's for a future season, but for now, Tayana Panova, thank you so much for coming on Call 'Em Like Museum.

TAYANA: Thank you so much for having me. This was a pleasure.

ERIC: Thanks again to Dr. Tayana Panova for coming on the podcast. You can find her on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube at dr.tpanova. And that's spelled P-A-N-O-V-A. She's also the co-host of the podcast The Perfect City, with Ariel Viera. I was inspired by her answer to the gift shop question, so I found a book of museum stickers — which is perfect for all ages, not just kids. I'm giving it away to one lucky subscriber of the Call 'Em Like Museum email newsletter. To enter, just sign up for the newsletter at likemuseum.com. Call 'Em Like Museum is hosted and edited by me, Eric Johnson. It's produced out of my podcast agency in San Francisco, LightningPod. Our marketing specialist is Julia Wilde, artwork by Rhe Civitello. Thank you for listening to this episode. I'll see you at the museum.