The Art of Museums

Learning about art has been a lifelong undertaking. The feeling of inadequacy when I was younger is slowly losing ground. Now, I enjoy a broad view of art and design through street fairs, artists' co-ops, and all the unexpected venues where working artists choose to display their wares and where people like me move among and interact with the artists and my fellow creativity admirers. 

I contrast this vibrant view of art with the art contained in museums. Museums solicit an attitude of intensive observation and quiet, like old libraries. They are vital for those of us who don’t own personal collections, but they may feel a little dead, as most museums display the art of the dead, the art of another time. It has been a slow evolution, but I am learning to blend the informal and formal conceptions of art into a whole outlook full of life and energy. 

Visiting art museums was an attempt to acquire culture as an adult. The results of such a visit didn’t last long, but it raised my outlook on the world for a few months or maybe even a few years. It was difficult to achieve any profound, permanent impact following my first art museum visits to these high-brow institutions. The immediate effect was not easily connected to any existing awareness I possessed. However, that changed as I visited more museums–experience built on experience.

For some forgotten reason, ten-plus years ago, I was listening to a foundation representative in Little Rock. I don’t remember the details surrounding the meeting, but I can replay this story he shared like it was yesterday. The speaker told us of his wife’s assignment to her high school students. The school was across the street from a newly opened art museum in a disadvantaged neighborhood. She hoped to spur them to use the school resources and those available at this new community resource. She asked them to identify an artist they liked and write a short explanation of why that artist spoke to them. She left them to their own devices to complete the assignment.  

She was disappointed in the results. A few had copied something from an encyclopedia, and others didn’t even complete the short assignment.  She set aside class time to share her frustration at the students’ missed opportunity. Students began explaining that they didn’t know art or artists and that they didn’t know how to do the project. She asked, “Would crossing the street have been too much trouble?” The kids sat momentarily, and finally, one brave soul raised his hand. Speaking for several of his classmates, he said, “We didn’t think that was a place for kids like us.” I was stunned and later considered that this perception might not be uncommon.  

Some museums have a formality about them that is incredibly off-putting for those who don’t have art museum experiences as children. My education helped me feel worthy to visit art museums when I was older. I had been to some small local history museums as a child. However, I felt out of place the first time I went to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Before seeing the Met, I had roamed around some small, private art collections. They didn’t prepare me for the size and scope of a national museum. 

Is art still alive once it’s been cloistered in a museum? Does the age of the art make it seem dead, as though you are visiting a cemetery? I think not. In 1923, Picasso explained, “To me there is no past or future in art. If a work of art cannot always live in the present, it must not be considered. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past, perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was.”

Many of the museums of my travels are in ornate, old buildings. The buildings

themselves are beautiful, but the high ceilings, marble walls, and polished floors give a few of these institutions the feel of a mausoleum. There are some positive features from the age of the buildings. The d’Orsay in Paris is located in a giant old train station across the street from the Seine River. The building inspires rather than dampens the spirit with its mammoth-sized clocks doubling as windows that, at one time, were critical for those riding the trains. In Florence in 1560, Cosimo I de Medici built the Uffizi Gallery for the administrative services of the great city. Knowing the history of these wondrous buildings in some way helps me feel more comfortable. 

The museums I have visited reflect a broad range of time, style, and creativity in international arts. On the historical side of this discussion is the Louvre in Paris. It shares antiquities from the sixth century B.C. through paintings in the 1890s.  I can’t begin to share the whole story of the Louvre, but this is my reaction to my time in that world-famous institution. 

We allowed less than a full day for our visit, which was not enough time. The facility has interesting architecture and history in addition to its art. It is the largest museum in the world, a three-sided building extending for several blocks on the two long sides. Not visible from the side streets is the main visitor entrance, the Pyramid, located in the center of the three sides. I was in awe as we exited our ride, faced the pyramid, and looked around to see the massive complex. I had seen the iconic entrance in books and numerous movies, but it was different in person.

There were many moments on our Paris trip when the history I had learned was within arm’s reach. I was a sponge, letting what I saw soak in to connect with the images of the art and related facts stored away in my head, enriching that information with greater understanding. 

The Louvre isn’t dead like the artists whose works reside there, but it provoked a deeper resonance around those works from other ages. Excitement wasn’t an emotion I connected to the experience; I had an almost spiritual response.

In addition to the “Mona Lisa,” other works and displays at the Louvre included “Venus de Milo,” the crown jewels of France, artifacts from the Napoleonic era, and “Coronation of the Emperor” (a giant painting 20 feet tall by 32 feet wide). The “Coronation” painting famously shows Napoleon's contempt when he seized the crown from the Pope and placed it on his head. 

Contrast my Louvre visit with a trip outside Paris to Monet’s house and gardens in

Giverny. I saw many of Monet’s paintings in museums, such as d'Orsay, during my trip to Paris, but seeing the environment that inspired many of his paintings held me in something like a trance. In a less formal art environment at Giverny, we visited Monet’s former home, run by a foundation that has restored the home and gardens. We walked around the lake and looked across at the green Japanese-style bridge. Monet’s paintings came to life before me as I studied the small lake with the waterlilies and the rowboats. His home and its gardens were his inspiration for that series. The scene gave me the feeling that I had been there before, though I hadn’t. The view let me mentally enter the paintings of his scenic gardens in a way the walls of the museums had not. 

The Dali in St. Petersburg, Florida, is an example of a museum building that expresses something about the singular artist it celebrates. Simply known as The Dali, this art museum in Florida is exceptional and was an easily accessible opportunity to see Dali’s work, which impacted the trajectory of art for decades.

The museum houses the best collection of Dali’s art outside of Spain. There is a story behind how the art ended up in St. Petersburg. In 1982, the New York Times described the connection “as surreal as one of the paintings.” The collection belonged to A. Reynolds Morse and Eleanor Morse of Cleveland, Ohio. They had met Dali and his wife in New York and had been friends for 40 years. The Morses had been hunting for a place for the collection but required that parts of it could not be sold off as most museums preferred to do. When that news became known, several community leaders in St. Petersburg succeeded in procuring the collection and constructing the original museum building. 

The Morse collection, as described in the brochures, included 93 oils, 200 watercolors and drawings,1000 prints, and many other creations of Salvador Dali. It was appraised in 1982 at $35 million. Since then, the Dali Museum has continued to acquire additional works and now has more than 2,000 works from Dali’s entire career in many mediums and an archive of related documents.

The current Dali Museum building was designed in 2011. The museum’s website describes the structure as reflecting Dali’s interests.  

“Designed by architect Yann Weymouth of HOK, it combines the rational with the fantastical: a simple rectangle with 18-inch thick hurricane-proof walls out of which erupts a large free-form geodesic glass bubble known as the ‘enigma.' The Enigma, which is made up of 1,062 triangular pieces of glass, stands 75 feet at its tallest point, a twenty-first-century homage to the dome that adorns Dalí’s museum in Spain. Inside, the Museum houses another unique architectural feature – a helical staircase – recalling Dalí’s obsession with spirals and the double helical shape of the DNA molecule.”

I noted the hurricane-proof walls, an essential component of a structure housing priceless art on Florida’s Gulf Coast waterfront. From the inside, the Enigma structure appears to ooze out of the building’s walls to provide a panoramic view of Tampa Bay and the St. Petersburg Pier. The tinted glass looks dark as you approach the building but is transparent. The helical staircase was the centerpiece of the museum’s open area, reaching through all three stories. 

Despite such inspired architecture, the art was crowded onto rows of panels in only a few relatively small rooms. The largest paintings were on the more substantial end walls. One mitigating feature was the virtual reality session on the “Dreams of Dali.” I found it helpful as a way to imagine, in my more ordered mind, how Dali’s expansive mind envisioned his art. A guided activity was also in the contemplation room adjacent to the gallery. These additional activities facilitated my conception of Dali’s vision. They breathed life into the more rigid displays of the actual works. 

Dali’s themes included death, religion, dreams, geometry, DNA, and optical illusions. They were more challenging subjects for me than the landscapes and portraits of other artists, with which I was more familiar. Some have pondered whether Dali used hallucinogens. All I have read and Dali’s statement indicates, “No,” he didn’t use drugs. It’s challenging to think that he could detach that far from reality without a chemical stimulus. His ability to envision the world in such unusual and grotesque ways was the source of his genius. 

The museum translated Dali’s interests in religion, psychology, science, and geometry, helping me make those connections. Surrealism pushed me to connect things that don’t typically go together, creating tension in my outlook. That slight discomfort encouraged me to develop a thought process for linking unrelated objects. I like art that challenges me to consider unexpected situations.

What I like most about Dali’s art and other modern art is that it suggests something for interpretation. Each individual brings their perspective to interact with the suggestion of the painting. When art is less literal, I can adapt the imagery more to my existence and place in the world. I can pull from the piece, blending it with what’s already in my head. Art generates a shift in my experience and perception of the world. All art does that, but abstract or surreal art offers a broader portal.  

I consider my expectations of how these museums bring art to life or, in some cases, elevate and insulate the art so that it doesn’t create energy or inspire a spark in viewers like me. I think back to those students who didn’t believe the museum across the street from their school was accessible to them. To a lesser extent, I, too, initially found art museums to be foreboding places. 

Great museums have found ways to make art accessible and engage the non-traditional public. They provide context and supporting experiences to bring to life two-dimensional paintings and three-dimensional marble sculptures. To some extent, it helps to know what to expect when you go. 

I conceive of art as a way of growing my knowledge of life and the world. It sparks my creativity and challenges my assumptions. It is a source of wonder. The advantages accrue through viewing art in museums of all types that preserve art from every era for posterity.  

Connections through art bring light to my corner of life. They build on all I have learned through travel itself and my reading inspired by my travels. The art I encounter makes me think, inspires, raises questions, and soothes me with beauty. This reaction occurs whether I encounter art across an ocean or down the road.