More and more museums and galleries worldwide are banning the use of a selfie stick, branding them ‘dangerous’ for both artwork and visitors.
With similar bans existing for tripods and monopods, the selfie stick has been prohibited at locations including the Getty in Los Angeles, the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Other major museums in the US have followed suit, with the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum among others implementing the ruling.
The selfie has become a global phenomenon to the point where the word was added to the Oxford Dictionary last year. In May,
London was declared selfie capital of the world and a recent survey of Instagram posts that include attractions and the world ‘selfie’ revealed the Eiffel Tower in Paris to be the most popular place to take a selfie, with other popular locations including Disney World in Florida, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, London’s Big Ben, and the Empire State Building in New York.
