Luca has been visiting museums: 4 months old and she’s already been to the LACMA (twice), MOCA, Hammer, and The Broad. We have some tickets to prove it.
The MOCA ticket doesn’t do justice to reality: Luca got to enjoy the full privileges of a press pass at both museums. Her mommy is a member of the Romanian section of AICA: she has been a member for a while. Even before leaving Romania, even before becoming a philosopher, mommy earned her art press pass, which lets her see most art shows free of charge. This is a link with a previous-previous life that mommy used to have. Luca doesn’t know this yet, but, while growing up, her mommy loved to look at photos. Probably most children do. Luca’s grandfather likes to paint: this is not his job; he’s a (retired) army physician. Painting has been one of his greatest hobbies, so Luca’s mommy looked at art albums, growing up. Other kids learn about dinosaurs (especially in the US) or they like looking at geography atlases, or learn about animals and plants by looking at zoological or botanical atlases. Our household didn’t have any of these. Instead, the pictures I remember looking at were reproductions of the art pieces housed in the Hermitage, Musee d’Orsay, or, even, the MET. I remember fondly trying to make a drawing of this Matisse, or of that Cezanne. My absolute favorite painter was Nicolae Tonitza: I used to think that there is nothing more beautiful than his portraits of little girls.
I believe that Luca has such eyes: a very good friend of mine called Luca’s eyes “soulful”. Indeed, you can get lost in them, forgetting that you’re looking at a baby, whose thoughts are simple and still quite uncommunicable. But, her soul is already there: she has Tonitza eyes to prove it!
Luca’s mommy grew up in Communist Romania: she could only visit Romanian museums. Only pictures of the Hermitage paintings were available to her and, for the longest time, she didn’t know that Tonitza was on display in a museum in her native city. The only way to see paintings that made sense to her was to look at art albums. Luca has already encountered her first Matisses, Cezannes, and Vincents. To be fair, mommy and daddy got to enjoy Toulouse-Lautrec at LACMA: baby Luca was snoring peacefully in her daddy’s arms.
I am curious to see whether being in contact with the art itself will make an impact in a different kind of way. Luca will have art albums to look at, too, of course, but they say that nothing compares to being face to face with the thing itself.
We have a friend who doesn’t like going to museums and when he travels, which is often, he avoids this particular touristy activity. I joke with him often that I hate going to museums, too. And I do, in some sense. I hate that most museums, these days, are nothing more than “storehouses of ideas”: they have art on display, but you can almost see the dust that covers it. The paintings, sculptures, and installations are often times forgotten: they seem to live in misery. Most museums treat their precious exhibits as a zoo from the past used to treat its animals. Poor exhibits were kept in cages, in semi-darkness, and were not fed an adequate diet.
To enjoy my visit at a museum, I need to see that an effort has been made. I need to see that a curator spent some time thinking about what the exhibits in a gallery can communicate to its viewers and how best to do it. This rarely happens, but, when it does, I am reminded of how much I love going to museums! The experience, for me, is akin to watching movies: if I watch a good movie, I am elated; if I watch a bad one, I get depressed and mourn the wasted time.
Sometimes, my knowledge of the history of art supplies the missing unifying theme; most often, however, I think: oh, look, another lazy curator… The Impressionists are grouped together just because they belong to a relevant -ism; and the Italian Renaissance paintings huddle together just because they come from adjacent geographical regions… Luca will get to hear me tell stories about the artworks: I will try to make them come alive for her, in a way in which they are simply not, in most cases. Until then, she gets to enjoy munching on her Lille Baby carrier.
