Many museums in Europe have free admission; at least for children. If you’re under 18, you can go see the many masterpieces housed in the National Gallery, in London. It is rare that museums in the US have free admission, although it’s beginning to be more and more the norm, since it’s not the price of admission that keeps a museum open. Some museums open their doors for free several days per month. By chance, we found ourselves at a museum on such a day. It was crowded: so many people, that it was a bit difficult to navigate around them and around the art, with baby Luca in tow. At first I thought: isn’t this great? This shows that people from all walks of life need culture and take advantage of the best programs around.
Soon, however, I noticed that I was becoming very tired: it turns out it’s as difficult to interact with the crowds at the museum as it is to do grocery shopping around 12 noon. Have you ever had to go buy groceries at that time of day? There aren’t even that many people around, but it feels impossible to do things quickly. Everyone seems not to know why they’re there: they go around the shopping cart, around their tails, and around everyone else at least three times before they’re done filling up. Wherever you try to step, you’ll step on someone’s toes, no matter how careful you are. So many people bump into me if I go shopping at noon, that I feel like I’m invisible — more so than usual.
People don’t necessarily go grocery shopping to have fun, although one should, of course, try to have fun no matter the activity. Why do people go to a museum? I go to have fun: I look at artworks and imagine myself inhabiting the worlds the artists are opening for me. It is an ecucated idea of fun, but not necessarily an elitist one. Or, so I like to think. Everyone goes to the movies: it’s never for free and it is shockingly expensive. Almost everyone I know goes to acquariums or natural science museums to learn about the world around us. But so few go to art museums to have fun!
Especially when an art museum is crowded, it’s obvious that most of the people around me don’t know how to enjoy themselves. Everyone looks so very serious; everyone tries to arrange their features just so, when they find out that they are looking at a Picasso! The pressure to behave a certain way is too great. Some seem to think that peace and quiet is what the artworks need. But that is wrong: they become alive when one thinks about the games they engender. Artworks love laughter and happy gigling; they get bored seeing only stern faces.
This air of seriousness will most certainly make one miss gems like this one. Look at it closely: see
the serenity it exudes! It’s just a little bit larger than a smartphone, but its world is so rich. Just under the surface, you can feel life’s buzz. Wouldn’t be a shame to miss it, just because you must look serious and find the works by the grandmasters?
I wanted to tell everyone: don’t get intimidated! It’s OK to laugh, it’s OK not to be impressed with this Brancusi or that de la Tour! After all, no one expects you to like the same things in a grocery store. Why should we be expected to revere all artworks?
Now that we have a little one, we start wondering about how to raise her. The main guiding principle will be to let her choose what she likes: meet her where she’s at. To do this effectively, we must present her with different choices. Among them, art viewing. For us, this probably ranks higher than musical education. We think that communication and living well with others should be cultivated the most: art allows one to travel and glimpse somehing from other cultures, in a way that classical muscal training doesn’t. I would like, most of all, for Luca to always enjoy her free days at a museum.