I’ve always kicked myself for not remembering to pack a Walkman — or, more recently, an iPod — on forays to two destinations. One is Home Depot, whose policy seems to be to make every nasal, unintelligible announcement three times before switching back to whatever treacly contemporary R&B radio station induces the most major-appliance sales. The other is The Museum — any museum, really, as most of them subscribe to an identical hushed-bank-vault authoritarianism that practically screams out for a more humanly scaled sensory corrective. And though contemporary-art museums occasionally break down and incorporate some audio artist’s work into their programming, or someone at a museum of cultural anthropology will set a low-volume loop of powwow songs running behind a tepee diorama, it rarely results in the kind of subjective experiential transformation you get from, say, looking at a roomful of Pollocks to the tune of... More >>>