We went to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston this weekend, and it was great. I felt like we barely scratched the surface of the truly beautiful artworks on display there.
Yet I also often saw people sitting on benches in the galleries, staring at their phones. Not that it should be a phone-free place, at all. I took pictures of some pieces for myself, as well as sharing them via text with others. Maybe that made me less present, but I feel like that was okay, that it broadened the experience without pulling me all the way out of it.
But some of the folks I saw were doing the time-killing thing, staring blankly at their screens, thumbing idly through some feed or other. Which I won’t pretend that I don’t do sometimes, let alone claim it’s some horrible thing that nobody should ever do.
But.
But maybe when you’re in the middle of one of the largest museums in the United States, with a permanent collection spanning more than 6,000 years of history, with some 64,000 works from six continents [citation provided], just maybe those Insta stories or tweets or even “breaking” news can wait for a little while. Maybe (certainly) I’m writing this to remind myself of this, for the next time, and the time after that, and not just when I’m in a world-class museum.
Leave your phone put away, and look around.
The Corn Poppy, by Kees van Dongen
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