[Chiakisama]

There's no purpose in this thing, just a short personal account of a day I spent in a museum.

ENJOY

It was the typical Saturday morning, the weather was decent and there were kids everywhere wandering the dark Manhattan streets looking for something to do, myself included. Out of the blue, my friend calls me and suggests we visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art because students get to go for free. We went to the museum and spent two hours wandering around looking at various paintings, sculptures and drawings. We wandered around looking for some random piece of art that would “move” us the way so many others have been moved before, but we gave up and decided to look for the bathroom.

On the way, we stumbled upon the Modern Art section of the museum and decided to give it a quick look before we left. We entered this vast white space filled with painting after painting, most of which we didn’t understand nor were, more importantly, moving to us. Suddenly we passed by something which, for no reason made me stop. It was a picture of the typical American landscape, with large rolling hills, plowed farmland, a few trees and a large lake all the way in the back. I was taken in by the landscape and couldn’t be sucked out of it despite my friend’s protests. She kept repeating, “It’s just the typical American landscape, let’s go, it’s not like you haven’t seen it before.”

The funny thing was though I had seen it before I saw it with new eyes, then I noticed that in the painting on top of the hills, inside the trees and over the lake all the way in the back there were words. It was the artist’s memories, and they were all over the painting. I was grateful for the fact that I stayed at the painting regardless of my friend’s protests because I was able to see something I had never seen before by giving the painting a chance. I felt like I would never see this painting again and I hungrily tried to take the entire painting in. I showed my friend the words in hope that she would help me in my endeavor to memorize the painting. Her eyes immediately opened wide and we both intensely examined the painting, looking for those memories and realizing how they related to us, even though we were the typical city kids.

I stopped for a second and stepped back from the painting. I saw the piece again, as if it were the first time I had seen art, my eyes were open to this new sense of beauty. I felt like the man in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave who was able to break free and see the beauty of the world of forms. My friend also took a step back, with the same dumbfounded look I had. I turned my face to look at her and said, “Dude, I think we’ve been moved.”