Today's New York Times has a great article on how romantic some couples find museums--particularly on those Friday nights when many NY museums are open late. Evidently the Met is a great first date place, and a colleague of mine visited the Rubin Museum on a Friday night not long ago, and was surprised--and thrilled--to find the lobby full of music and people drinking martinis. In the Times article, one visitor described her museum going experience,"Going to the museum is intimate. It's something you experience alone, but communicate to the other and exchange impressions." Andrea Bayer, a curator, described a visit as "allowing an expansiveness of time." For those of us--mostly all of us, I suspect, museum visits offer an antidote to the rushed, hurriedness of our lives. I find that although I like history museums, I visit them as a busmen's holiday--what do the labels say, how is something mounted, what are the media installations. But I find art museums to allow that expansiveness of time, a place where you really can transport yourself. My husband and I visit museums totally differently--I'm a skimmer and he's a deep looker, but the chance to see visit a museum, then sit and talk about it...that's a wonderful thing.
Above: The Love Letter by Fragonard, at the Metropolitan Museum
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