Talk:Tag:tourism=gallery

Discuss Tag:tourism=gallery page here. See also original proposal discussion at Talk:Proposed features/Art gallery

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Unfortunate choice of value name

It really is unfortunate this tag is tourism=gallery when it could be a self-explanatory tourism=art_gallery. When I see ambiguous terms being used like this, I wonder if it's being used correctly... And as can be seen in the proposal, there wasn't a good reason not to use tourism=museum + museum=art instead. --Jgpacker (talk) 12:08, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

This was discussed between 2008 and 2014 over at Talk:Proposed features/Art gallery.

In all that time nobody mentioned the idea of tourism=museum + museum=art. It's an interesting suggestion, which should have been discussed, but wasn't. Strange really that nobody mentioned it.

But we did discuss the words. Museums (of science/history) and art galleries are quite distinct different things. I think it's just a confusing quirk of language that they can both be called "museums". Personally I think art galleries deserve their own top level tag. These are very big buildings and major tourism attractions / features of cities. My feeling is that they deserve a bit of fidelity and slightly more precise classification at the top level.

Some people said that the world "gallery" was ambiguous because it can mean other things. As a native english speaker it doesn't seem too ambiguous to me. I don't see it as a big problem. You'll tend to see the other definitions listed below our intended meaning e.g. wiktionary, and certainly in the context of an object on a map being tagged with the word "gallery", I would always immediately assume an art gallery (rather than a balcony or series of arches). Now obviously writing art_gallery would nail any doubts anyone might have, but the advantage of this needs to be weighed against the disadvantage of a slightly longer more cumbersome tag. How we weigh up those things is highly debatable of course, but personally I like the nice short "gallery".

There were some other issues raised too, but personally I'm satisfied and relieved that tourism=gallery has been documented. We finally (after years!) have a simple tag for art galleries sitting nicely alongside the museum tag.

-- Harry Wood (talk) 16:28, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Change proposals

There was recently a proposal to phase out this tag Proposed features/Discourage tourism=gallery and now another proposal to re-describe it to re-draw the lines between the definitions of this and museums and art shops Proposed features/Art museums, art galleries and art shops. And lots of spillover discussion on the tagging mailing list.

I would expect the starting point for somebody who doesn't like the documentation on tourism=gallery, would be to come right here and talk about it here, but for some reason we just get these proposal pages appearing. These should obviously be linked from here, so... there's the links above. Go take a look. I won't attempt to explain the rationale for the proposals since I don't understand it myself.

-- Harry Wood (talk) 15:23, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Problems with the gallery tag

There are a few serious problems with the gallery tag stemming from the ambiguity of the word "gallery" as well as from the substantial difference in the international use of the word and the British definition.

At the moment there is a tag tourism=museum which is defined to be a history, technical, or any non-artistic museum, then tourism=gallery for anything showing art and finally shop=art for shops that sell art supplies and artworks. Problem is that there is currently nothing that distinguishes an institutional museum with a collection of paintings and a commercial gallery. Commercial galleries are a vital part of the art world. The typical visitor is not a customer who buys art, but just comes to see the art, but the business model is substantial different one compared to a museum.

-- Panoramedia (talk) 19:03, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree with the current usage of tourism=museum, tourism=gallery and shop=art.
Why is it needed to distinguish commercial art galleries from institutional art museums? And is it verifiable? I think some of art museums may be operated to obtain income, some may be to collect, to exhibit and/or to research art works, but many of them may be mixed. I think tagging based on the business model is not verifiable (or hard to verify), and we are hard to tell them when we tag an art museum.
I think it is good and clear definition that tourism=museumtourism=gallery is a place to exhibit art works and shop=art is a place to sell art works mainly.
--Mfuji (talk) 04:07, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

I think your answer is the perfect example why we need a revision of the terms. Contrary to what you write, current definition in the wiki is, that tourism=museum is not used for art. And yes, there is a huge difference between an art museum and a contemporary art gallery and it is not only the business model. It is verifiable and it is needed to distinguish them because there are different things. And a gallery is not considered a shop either, because buying is not what a typical visitor goes there for.
--Panoramedia (talk) 20:28, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

OOps! I wanted to mean: I think it is good and clear definition that tourism=gallery is a place to exhibit art works and shop=art is a place to sell art works mainly.
In Japan, art galleries and art museums are same (美術館). historical, science or technical museum are used a different term (博物館). So I agree with to use tourism=gallery for an art museum. --Mfuji (talk) 16:13, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Problem is that there is currently nothing that distinguishes an institutional museum with a collection of paintings and a commercial gallery. You mean an institutional art gallery from a commercial art gallery :-) That is true. If they are both art galleries they would both be tagged tourism=gallery per the current tag docs. Why is it important to make this commercial vs institutational distinction in a top level tag? (after all even the dustiests of old institutions would probably sell you art if you paid enough) And why would you refer to an "institutional museum with a collection of paintings" rather than an "an institutional art gallery"? Strange use of language I would say -- Harry Wood (talk) 10:01, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Why it is important to distinguish them: Because a art museum and a art gallery are two completely different things and have distinctively different roles in the art world. I'm aware that British English usage of "gallery" is somewhat vague, but I don't think we'll start tagging Galeries Lafayette or Galerie Kaufhof with tourism=gallery, just because they have the word gallery in it. But hey what am I here to say what's important. Maybe it not as important as amenity tags like bar, bbq, biergarten, ice_cream, casino, cinema, gambling, dojo, game_feeding or the importance of distinguishing between nightclub, stripclub, swingerclub and brothel. -- Panoramedia (talk) 10:28, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

"a art museum and a art gallery are two completely different things and have distinctively different roles in the art world". That's seems to be the nub of the issue. You say they're two completely different things. I say there's not really any such thing as an "art museum". It's actually just a different way of saying art gallery.

It's actually also a rather a clumsy way of saying it. People don't call things "art museums" very much, but quite often call things "museum of art". It's a funny old language isn't it? And I will concede that while a "museum of art" is an art gallery, the phrase also conveys a bit more information about the type of art gallery. But certainly when it comes to classifying things we can very well call these things "art gallery". Yes. Art gallery is quite a broad thing. There are many art galleries in the world. That's why it is a sensible top level tag.

So now let me rephrase my "why is it important to distinguish" question, in the context of current proposals: Why do we have a proposal to distinguish between an institutional art gallery and a commercial art gallery, while at the same time proposing to blow away the much more basic distinction between a thing which exhibits art versus a thing which exhibits other topics history/science/etc?

-- Harry Wood (talk) 11:40, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

This last point seems to me the first valid concern. However, I still believe it is better to solve this with a subtag in the museum. It is easier to distinguish a museum from a gallery then distinguishing the current mess between shop=art and tourism=gallery. Quoting from the wiki: "private galleries which are primarily funded by selling the works to visitors would still be tagged shop=art. Meanwhile a private gallery with a high turnover of visitors and relatively infrequent sales (expensive art!) would count as a tourism=gallery" That line is IMHO impossible to draw. I'm an art professor and would like to see this cleaned up. I understand your point, but museum and gallery (what you both call gallery) in my point of view need different top level tags. -- Panoramedia (talk) 16:12, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

So yeah there's two lines under discussion at the same time which is a bit confusing. The line between tourism=museum <-> tourism=gallery and the line between tourism=gallery <-> shop=art. I'm very aware of these lines. The way that second line is described... that was mostly done by me, with a few other people's input. Is it a mess? I like to think not, but maybe it could be improved. It's essentially an attempt to capture the feel of an art gallery versus an art shop. We see a lot of shops which pretentiously try to define themselves as galleries when they're really just a shop selling art. If I can hear a cash till ringing as people purchase art while I'm looking around, then to me that's definitely more of a shop than a gallery. But sometimes shops are big and spacious and art-gallery-like. The art is so expensive that they only need to sell one piece per day. So on this sliding scale, when does a shop become an art gallery? It is a fuzzy line for sure. That doesn't necessarily mean we have to give up and draw the line somewhere else (after all we can have a very similar discussion about the fuzzy line between pub<->bar, and bar<->cafe. etc etc.)

Then again if we move the line, and narrow the definition of shop=art a bit in order to make it clearer ...well I think that idea could be written as a proposal with a rationale which at least makes sense to me.

-- Harry Wood (talk) 14:49, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Please propose a (for you) sensible way how we can distinguish art museums and art galleries. If you don't agree with the proposal and consensus reached on the mailinglist, at least come up with a better idea. The need for a distinction is definitely there. In contemporary German we would not call a "Museum" a "Galerie" (some historical exceptions exist). People are used to this distinction. OK, I get in Japanese and English these two things are called with the same name, but we need a way to represent the distinction in the tags of OSM. How would you do it? -- Panoramedia (talk) 09:33, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

In the Editor

Even the ID editor shows how confusing the tags are: If you type "gallery" it shows an item "Art Gallery" with a palette as an icon. When chosen, it turns out to be shop=art. In essence currently a gallery is tagged as shop while a museum is tagged as gallery. Screenshot -- Panoramedia (talk) 22:59, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Hmm yes. I think we all agree that a shop=art should not be called an "art gallery" and yet that's what ID does, so that's going to feed into this confusion. We would all agree that should be "Art shop" hey? I'll raise an issue -- Harry Wood (talk) 12:00, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

That title for the shop=art prefix has now been fixed to be 'Art store'. I suggested 'Art shop' but close enough. As long as it doesn't pop up with the title "art gallery". That was indeed confusing. -- Harry Wood (talk) 01:17, 7 March 2016 (UTC)