A Visit to The Met

So Cindy and I ended up going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Sunday, and I just felt all wrong. First of all, it was incredibly crowded. It seems like every time I go to a museum it's ten times more crowded than the least time, leading me to believe that there really is a cultural crisis upon us, and our society is like a sinking ocean liner, and the museums are the last remaining part of the boat sticking up above the water and everyone is congregating there like rats. Or else, this bad economy business really is a scam.

Unfortunately, I just got in a worse and worse mood as the day went along. The museum started to feel to me like the world's largest and tackiest thrift store. Or those times when you go to a thrift store and don't see one thing you want to buy and just get depressed about all the crap people have owned but no one wants. I started to feel like I was unable anymore to keep perpetuating this lie that any of this art is at all good. The only thing any of it ever accomplished was to survive. And maybe what future dead artists should invest in is a lot of plastic containers and waterproof tape, or even lead containers. Your art will survive future generations simply because it was all that was left after the earth was made uninhabitable. And even if a few people do make it into the future somehow, digital files sure aren't going to. Maybe I should get back my typewriter.

Finally, however, before staggering out into the park, we looked at this little suite of rooms all the way in the back of the museum directly behind a kind of sunken lounge that looks like it could be an abandoned 1980's food court in the atrium of a downtown Indianapolis bank complex. These few rooms were there, apparently, to exhibit some of the Robert Lehman collection in a unique, intimate setting that reminded me of a movie whorehouse—or perhaps the offices of Ernest Angley Ministries in Akron, Ohio. There were no people AT ALL back there, and the light was low, windows cracked, vines coming through the wall like the park wanted to take back its rightful space. This was the Met's secret museum! And the paintings here were the best I'd seen, so I've included some pictures. You'll recognize Rembrandt's famous "Dog Face Larry"— but unfortunately I don't remember the names or the painters of the other two: the "surreal landscape with dead trees and an old guy" and my very favorite, the Lynchian "stern woman who won't sit in the chair in a much too large empty space." So for all my complaining, after all, I left the museum inspired!