Let us admit it: it seems that the public at an Art gallery never linger to deepen the contents of the artworks. But Art is there also for that purpose; or maybe today we are in an epoch in which only the appearance counts and the value of an artwork is just the economic investment or as house decor?

Why people do not linger, do not deepen? Art, the one that in my opinion is worthy of the capital letter, has also the mission to show us new horizons, to make us to think and to intellectually interact.
Sure, It is not the only purpose, but in my opinion it is one of the most important.

The sign of the modern times? People do not have time, they do feel to have no time: they feel forced to frantically race, to pursue something unattainable, perpetually and without rest. "Who stops is lost" or "time is money" will be the epitaphs that will be written on the tombstone of this epoch?

Now I recall that vision of the Hell in the Divina Comedia by Dante Alighieri in which the cowardly people, for punishment, eternally run after a rag as ensign.
The torture reserved by Dante to the cowards is to pursue a "useless ideal", represented by a ragged and worn-out flag.

I do not want to say that today's people suffer from sloth, indeed the contrary; because they have to live the same situation of those damned in the Divine Comedy, but they suffer the torture in the earthly life without having ever been a sinner.

In fact the reason why the public do not linger in front of a work is not the laziness, indeed: it deals with a frenzy for something intangible, unknown.
Obviously to search for a purpose, to have a goal, is legitimate and necessary; however the frenzy to lose the possibility to find something better, does not allow to stand for a while and better evaluate all the possibilities.

Morally I do not think that people can be accused of sloth, because, in case, they are the victims of this frenzy. A slothful person is one who snuggles in his own laziness; we could define him an indifferent, a superficial. Indeed I think that this condition of the contemporary man is induced by the great diffusion of interested opinions of the economy.
Simply speaking we could say that many people do not know which way to turn, they are at the mercy of a total confusion.

In front of an artwork these people do not linger because confused and searching for something that they could easily recognize and give them a minimum of certainty, or an artwork that is direct, easily understandable.
Evidently their mind is overloaded and it answers only to what matches to the most tenacious engrams (the mnemonic memories unconsciously or compulsorily stored); it answers only to what is not overloading any further.

This is just an analysis, not a conclusion.