‘Have your own experience’: top sculptor pulls plug on gallery audio guides

They are ubiquitous at art galleries across the world: the audio guide telling shuffl ing visitors the full story of what they are looking at and occasionally how they should feel.

- Mark Brown

In the eyes of Sir Tony Cragg , one of the world’s leading sculptors, they are a “terrible” modern scourge that “mess up” the enjoyment of art. “I think they look sad,” he said. “It is a new world image that I really dislike and distrust intensely.”

Cragg is opening a major exhibition at Castle Howard, one of Britain’s most spectacular stately homes made even more famous by being a location for the TV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited and the series Bridgerton.

There are 28 sculptures across the house and gardens – most being seen in the UK for the fi rst time – and very defi nitely no audio guides for the exhibition.

“We’re happy,” said Castle Howard’s head curator, Christopher Ridgway . “We don’t want to be overly prescriptive.”

In Cragg’s eyes audio guides spoil the experience of looking at art. “The way I have met art and become engaged with it is just standing in front of an artwork and having my own experience. That is what is so fantastic about looking at stuff .