Museum goers spend roughly 8 seconds gazing at a piece of art before moving onto the next. While that statistic is a bit unnerving, it's forgivable when we consider both our dwindling attention spans and the sheer number of artworks crammed inside a museum.

The Louvre, for example, is home to 35,000 pieces of art. Let's say you were to spend just 1 second looking at each piece of art in the Louvre. It would take you nearly 10 hours to get all the way through the museum. This begs the question: If you were to see the entire Louvre in a single day, would you have actually seen the Louvre? The answer is no.

You can't truly see a piece of art in 8 seconds (let alone 1), just like you can't truly see a person by simply glancing at them. Slow looking is a practice that encourages museum goers to spend not seconds but minutes––and sometimes hours––gazing at a single piece of art. A "Slow Looker" might take a trip to the Louvre and kill 3 hours gazing at The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault.

Slow looking is a reminder that it's far better to pay more attention to less than less attention to more.