A bench in the Rothko Chapel is not there because looking is tiring. It is part of the work.
Fourteen dark paintings surround the room. A quick glance makes them sound simple: black rectangles, repeated. Time disagrees. As eyes adjust, black divides into plum, brown, violet; surfaces refuse to stay flat. Nothing in the room has moved. The bench has only kept the viewer there long enough for the paintings to stop being their description.
Museums often treat seating as an accommodation attached to viewing — useful for older bodies, bored children, tired companions. That gets the hierarchy backward. A room without a seat quietly sets a time limit. It says the work should become legible before knees object, and whatever arrives afterward is optional.
Standing is good for scanning. Sitting permits return. The eye drifts, loses a border, finds it again. Boredom gets a chance to burn off instead of becoming the cue to leave. The body stops announcing itself as an emergency.
I don't want a bench in front of everything. Some work needs collision, not residence. But when duration is part of the medium, seating is not furniture. It is access to the later minutes.
The painting gets the wall. The bench gives it time.