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| - Yes, this is an amazing museum with an extensive collection, but you can find a plethora of other reviews to tell you that, and it's not in dispute. However, I believe that the staff's hospitality at any place that's frequented by the public is a true key indicator of its stature. And in our two visits I was thoroughly disappointed. We have always taking our children to museums from birth on and are a family that believes that art and culture are important items to expose our children to starting at an early age, and ensure that great cultural institutions don't have an aging patron base. We were at the museum with our 16 month old, who has visited and been welcomed at Museums around the world including the Met and the Moma in NYC, the Tate and the British Museum in London, the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai, and dozens of others. At each of these the staff has been thrilled to see a young one, and gone out of their way to be warmly welcoming, flexible, accommodating, and on repeated occasions we have been told how much they appreciate young audiences.
At the Cleveland Museum of art we found the staff cold, unwelcoming and at times even hostile towards our toddler. It wasn't even a singe staff member or a single visit. On both our visits we had staff and eyes following him with dour looks almost like they were expecting our one year old to try and make off with a Picasso Blue Period masterpiece. Multiple staff members constantly suggested we go to to the gallery one which is an interactive exhibit and the only place they expect to see children, I guess. We had an overvigilant staff member point out a baby milk bottle which was covered and closed hanging from our son's stroller telling us that food was not allowed. Perhaps she would have preferred that we leave his bottle at home and then let him scream for 45 minutes when he got hungry. On one occasion when my wife walked toward an exhibit room with our toddler sleeping in his stroller, the door attendant asked her what she was looking for as others simply walked in.
Now keep in mind, that our Toddler was extremely well behaved, perhaps sometimes vocal at his excitement of a painting, maybe on one occasion tried to get close to a scuffed Plexiglass pedestal holding a large Rodin, but nowhere close to the art only to be admonished that he was not allowed to touch the art. We were followed by unfriendly glares like our one year old was a known sex offender in a schoolyard playground.
At the same time, it seemed to be okay for a woman in the inside atrium to be laying on the floor sleeping, next to her husband who was seated at a table reading the New York Times.
I have honestly never seen anything like this before. As a family we are members, patrons, and donors of several esteemed institutions of art and culture around the world, and I can honestly say that something is seriously wrong at this institution. Given the pervasiveness of the issue across the staff across two separate visits it's clearly a leadership issue that stems from above rather than a single crotchety staff member. It took a lot for me to write this after looking at all the other glowing reviews of the institution to write this. But to me an institution of art and culture that curates such amazing works should simply send them back where they came from if they're not willing to make extraordinary efforts to be inclusive of future generations of art patrons.
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