Although security in galleries and museums has become more sophisticated, no camera can ever substitute for a keen pair of eyes. The chairs that meld into the background of every room in every gallery and museum are there for the attendants who observe the public observing the exhibits. This is one of the quiet, uncelebrated facets of working within the arts world.
The primary job of any attendant is to ensure the protection of exhibits, by stopping the public from touching or damaging them in any way. The rest of their job is less clearly defined. Attendants are not guides, but they do act as unofficial sources of information about the museums or galleries they work in.
Since there is usually no formal training in this area given to attendants, what they tell you about exhibits will often reflect what they are themselves most interested in. This means every attendant will have a unique and idiosyncratic perspective on the contents of their gallery or museum.
Willie Cruise (56) has been working as an attendant at the Natural History Museum since the early 1970s. Of all Dublin's treasure houses, the NHM is surely the strangest and most surreal.
Generations of Irish children have been fascinated and appalled by its numerous cases of faded stuffed animals.
The NHM, which first opened in 1857, is a museum within a museum: a perfectly preserved example of Victoriana, all stout mahogany cases, tiled floors and metal grilles.
"When Queen Victoria died," Cruise says, "all the cases in the museum were painted mourning black, all the wood." He remembers when he came to work in the NHM in the 1970s, there were still some black cases in the museum. "It wasn't until the 1980s before the paint was finally removed from the last of the cases."
The animals and birds that populate the showcases of the NHM have long since lost their colours. The interior is a mass of muted colours; greys and browns and off-white.
Over the decades many of the exhibits seem to have transmogrified into creatures quite distinct from their original selves. Long before Damien Hirst was pickling sheep, the NHM was displaying formaldehyde-preserved fish in vertical jars, looking like strange and disturbing sticks of rock in some gothic sweetshop.
In one of the upstairs cases are the teeth and jaws of a shark, open wide and looking like some postmodern necklace. The great Irish deer at the entrance is bolted together, its ribcage like the shell of a boat, the span of its vast antlers like sails.
Many of the larger animals resemble versions of toys; seams of stitching running under their bellies and down their legs. The elephant looks as if it has been tarmacadamed. The bounty of Victoria's Raj is everywhere; numerous heads of exotic animals studding every wall.
What is it like to have spent so many years looking at so many glass eyes? Do you get so used to it all you don't see it any more? "Well, I've never liked all those cases of insects and I still don't. I have a phobia of them. As for the spiders!" Cruise shivers involuntarily. "We have tarantulas upstairs. Everyone always wants to see those."
What are his favourite exhibits? "The great Irish deer that you see when you come in, because it's so old and rare and it still amazes me, after all these years," he says without hesitation.
"I think the Natural History Museum is better than the zoo, because people can get closer to the animals," Cruise suggests. Sunday afternoons are the busiest, when families arrive. He prefers to walk around the museum, rather than sit. "You have to be on your feet when there's a lot of children here. They go a bit mad in here."
Although most of the exhibits are in cases, some of the larger animals, such as the giraffe, are in the open. No matter how vigilant attendants are, the unexpected can always occur. An over-excited child once vaulted over the stuffed zebra displayed on one of the upper floors. "He just ran straight to it, so fast we couldn't stop him."
Peter Gannon (34) started out working for Dublin Corporation as a cleaner. Then he did relief work in the library of the Civic Museum, after which he began work as an attendant in the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art seven years ago.
He overhears a lot of comments from the public about the exhibits. "They usually say, `My child could do that'," he grins, "especially the modern work."
Like Cruise, who has always been interested in history and archaeology, Gannon is fascinated by art. "When I came here first, I wanted to know everything about all the exhibits and about the history of the building but you can't take it all in in one go. I try to read up on artists one at a time, so I can talk to the public about them. I never get bored in here. The paintings rotate in and out of storage and there's always touring exhibitions, so I'm never looking at the same things for too long."
Gannon prefers the work of more traditional painters. "I really like John Lavery and Sean Keating. I don't like art being complicated. The abstract works wouldn't be my favourites at all - paintings like Mark Francis's Circulation 97. It's supposed to be about blood and the circulation system, but what makes it art? It's not a question of hating the abstract works, it's more that they confuse me. They're not accessible. A lot of working class people come in here and they definitely prefer looking at the traditional-type paintings. I've watched them."
Collins Barracks, (part of the National Museum), is the most recently established major museum in Dublin, having opened less than a year ago.
Wendi McDermott (20) is an attendant there. "Attendants here are taught to be very customer care orientated," she reports.
McDermott uses the expression "customer care" several times in the conversation. While both Cruise and Gannon stress that talking to the public is an integral part of their job, the language of the expression McDermott uses is more usually associated with marketing and commerce. She also reports that "We're briefed on new exhibits before they go on display."
Listening to McDermott is to realise that Collins Barracks is indeed a type of international business: that the silver bowls and carved crosses, the Tiffany roundel and hurling ball made of hair that are displayed so beautifully within it, are aimed at attracting customers cum tourists.
Collins Barracks is a different museum from the generations-old family-visited Natural History Museum. Almost everything in it is old, but it's all presented in a totally new way, which is personified in McDermott's perception of her role as a "customer-care" attendant.
It is also reflected in the way many of the exhibits are not behind glass, but displayed on raised platforms, such as the room which contains Irish country furniture. "You have to be watching out all the time in that room. People are always touching the chairs and tables, because they grew up with furniture like that or even still have them in their own houses."
Many of the soldiers who once resided in the barracks have been back to see their former sleeping quarters transformed into displays of silver and Irish country furniture.
"They come back and tell us all sorts of stories, especially now, with the peacekeeping exhibition that's running upstairs. They told us there's a ghost on the third floor, of a soldier who hanged himself. A lot of the attendants don't like working up there, but I don't mind it."
McDermott's first memory of going to a museum was to the Natural History Museum as a child. "I was terrified. All those eyes watching me! and you could see the holes in some of those animals where the bullets had gone in." As part of her training, McDermott had a one-month placement at the NHM.
"I never went upstairs in all that time," she confesses. "I heard there was some sort of display of skeletons upstairs where you could see the evolution of a gorilla and the thought of it just freaked me out. I stayed on the ground floor. I guess I'm not afraid of the ghost in Collins Barracks but those stuffed animals in the Natural History Museum have always terrified me!"