Hi fellow museum worker here (natural history in my case) and I feel your wrath at visitors having to touch everything.... Like, what makes them want to touch fossils from the jurassic and taxidermied animals when there's signs everywhere to not touch???? And then they mouth off at staff that we're ruining their fun......
It's the worst, yeah.
I get that humans are tactile creatures, of course. I like touching things, too. And a lot of museums try to introduce touchables to satisfy that need- some of the ones I work at certainly do.
But. You're grown-ups (this is inevitably more of a problem with adults than children, I find). You should be able to use your Smart BrainTM to say "hm, I've been told that if I touch this, it will degrade faster and nobody will get to enjoy it! Other people also matter, so I should not touch it!" and then not do that.
Common sense, not so common, etc.
(I sometimes gently joke that our city has many fine antique stores happy to sell examples that you can touch to your heart's content, if I have repeat offenders on my hands. It's often fairly effective.)











