Philippa Kelly, Do museums need to crack down on selfies?, The Art Newspaper, 12 November 2025
The Uffizi in Florence is restricting selfies, and New York’s Frick Collection bans all photography—but other museums encourage them.
“Ban selfie-takers from museums—these people don’t deserve to see great art,” read a headline on The Telegraph’s website earlier this year. In the article, the columnist Celia Waldon described her need to take “anger-management breaths” after finding Emile Jean Horace Vernet’s 1831 Portrait of a Lady blocked from view by a visitor with phone in hand.
“Ban selfies and you encourage people to take in their cultural heritage—perhaps even develop a little respect for it,” Waldon concluded.