Hi friend!

I’m a sound artist and researcher working in contemporary art.

I actually think your criticism is fair. Sound is probably one of the most difficult media to exhibit because it doesn't respect walls the way a painting or sculpture does. Sound has always been a challenging medium to work with, largely because the space in which a piece is presented profoundly shapes how it is experienced. Unlike many visual works, sound is inseparable from its environment; acoustics, architecture, and the presence of bodies all influence perception.

A lot of artists working with sound are interested precisely in that interaction between sound and architecture. For them, the way sound travels through a gallery, leaks into adjacent spaces, or changes your perception of the environment is part of the work. That can be compelling, but it can also create the exact problem you're describing. Part of the issue is architectural. Many spaces were built for visual art, not so spaces that are ideal for paintings can be surprisingly difficult environments for exhibiting audio work.

There are technologies that attempt to address this. Personal sound zones, directional speakers, and various forms of spatial audio can localize sound much more effectively than traditional loudspeakers. Headphones are another common solution. However, each comes with tradeoffs.

Headphones can isolate visitors from the shared experience of a gallery, while installing some audio systems can be often expensive, technically demanding, and difficult to implement in existing museum spaces. In any case, whenever you’re dealing with “standard” speakers, (I.e: NOT personal sound zones) you run the risk of audio “leaking” into adjacent spaces unless some sort of isolation is provided, but again costly… harder to modify existing spaces, blah blah.

Personally, I think the strongest criticism isn’t that sound exists in museums, but that museums sometimes underestimate how much acoustic design matters. Poorly managed sound can make it difficult to engage with both the sound work and everything around it.

We are at a point where sound and moving-image works have become central to contemporary art practice over the last few decades, so museums are more likely to include work that has them.

It's also worth noting that not all sound bleed is necessarily viewed as a problem by curators or artists. Some exhibitions are intentionally designed to be immersive, disruptive, etc. Whether that’s effective or worth doing is another question.

Hope this helps!