Tell me about some wonderful experiences you’ve had at museums that were not directly related to the collections.
Here’s one of mine:
A number of years ago I visited the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours. It was the middle of a weekday and was almost entirely empty: Peak Musuem Experience. So I veered off from my travel companion and wandered through the palace-turned-museum by myself.
What made it really special were the docents - this rotating band of little old ladies who followed me from room to room but somehow managed to give me exactly enough space to make me feel looked after but not surveilled. The only exception me was when I unthinkingly leaned up on a fireplace cornice to get a closeup look at a painting - I was roundly and deservedly berated for that little stunt.* Thank god I didn’t damage anything and thank god I was being watched.
Overall, it was one of the most pleasant museum visits I’ve ever had, and I am not an ‘art museum person.’
*she yelled at me in French and I speak not a lick, but getting yelled at by an old lady when you absolutely deserve it is probably as close as we’ll get to a universal tongue.
Totally “non-collection related”: We visited NYC at the same time as Hurricane Henri, so decided to spend the entire day at the Met.
As my wife power-walked through every single room, I’d occasionally just sit and doodle caricatures of the other tourists. With captions explaining who they were, where they were from, and what they were thinking. High point of the trip, for me.
Visited with a friend who was a big Peanuts fanatic. I was mildly interested, but thoroughly enjoyed it.
What made it special was that the docents were people who were personal friends of the artist and his family throughout his life. So, they spoke of him as a person that they knew, instead of as a subject of academic study. This included what young folks refer to as “spilling tea” about his relationships. Apparently, he rather infamously had an affair with someone half his age, split up with his wife, and married again soon after to someone else altogether. The docents discussed this in a very human way.
They also talked about his life in the community. He was a huge hockey nut, and built a rink in town. Kids would play hockey with him there and didn’t really know him as a famous cartoonist, he was just the hockey guy.
My wife and I were sitting on a bench next to the exterior walls of Hearst Castle when a passing docent informed us that it used to be Cary Grant’s “make out bench”. It was situated at a turn in the path so you could hear someone approaching long before they could see you.
I arrived at the Palace of Versailles early on a Monday morning in mid-October, I was one of the first group they let in. Rushed through the Palace itself and proceeded out into the gardens and found that I pretty much had them all to myself. I took about a hundred pictures of statues before I gave up and just started enjoying the place for its vibe, very cool. There must have been 500 more statues, which I totally don’t regret taking pictures of.
It was harvest time and the leaves were turning so I was pretty well pleased with myself and meandered throughout the grounds until lo and behold I ended up at the northern corner where Maria Antoinette’s Chalet was located. Her gardens were still in full bloom and the grapes were ripe. I went through a grape trellis that was like a 40- 60 feet long tunnel where you were completely hidden from everyone and I without thinking I took a handful of very tiny perfectly ripened grapes that were the sweetest I have ever had. I later found out that they were grapes for Champaign! Wow! I just ate grapes meant for royal Champaign
I then went out to the rest of her garden area and came across three of the most unusual goats I have ever seen, so I started talking and making goat sounds to them. It was then that a caretaker came over and berated me for bothering the animals in French, which I don’t speak but fully understood his meaning.
I then walked back towards the Palace and the mass swarm of people coming in was annoying compared to my trek through the gardens alone. One of the best days of my life.
Museum-related: I was sitting in the courtyard of the Louvre during a walk around Paris (the museum is basically a hollow square). It looked like they were shooting some sort of commercial or photo shoot.
A woman came up to me and started speaking French, commenting on what they were doing. Now, I took high school French, but that was decades earlier and it was only coming back in fits and starts and I couldn’t follow.
I replied, “Je suis Américain. Je ne parle Francais tres bien.” (I’m American. I don’t speak French very well).
She said, “Vous parlez Francais tres bien.” (You speak French very well)
I said “Merci” and we spoke a bit in English.
I was pretty proud of that. It was because my French teacher was a stickler for correct pronunciation.
Walked into the Women’s bathroom at the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum and saw “To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before” on the wall of the bathroom. Somewhere I have a photo of it.
In high school, we made a field trip to the L.A. County Museum of Art. In the lunch break/free time, my friends and I were walking around the park. One of my friends met a guy, and they spent the rest of the time lounging on the grass and chatting. I admit to feeling a bit of jealousy. Why not meeeeeeeee?
Well, turns out he was a Scientologist and was trying to recruit her.
So, not the best experience, but the best narrow escape?
I think I’ve told the story here before, but my wife and I more or less randomly drove up to a small castle in Germany, and we saw the tour was about to start except we were the only people waiting for it. An older woman came out eventually, surprised to find anyone, and then took the two of us in on the tour.
We had to put slick little booties on to protect the floor, and at one point in a long hallway, she suddenly took a running start and slid down the hall, laughing like a mad woman. She then gestured for us to do the same, and we did. Then we completed the rest of the tour as normal.
The Getty in LA. The collection is fine, but the building and grounds are stunning, and don’t take my word for it, it was the actual Good Place in the Good Place. I recognized it immediately and let out an actual shout when I saw it.
It also boasts a great view LA. The first time I went I was by myself so I just wandered aimlessly around the grounds and museum. Such a relaxing time.
When I was in middle school my family took a trip to Washington, DC. One of the days we were there my parents dragged us to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. At that age, my sister and I were not interested in art museums at all. One of the security guards noticed how bored we looked, and pointed out some fun things about some of the paintings for us. Like how in one still life, the artist had painted a bunch of insects into the scene, which you would hardly notice unless you looked closely. And how in one of the portraits the subject’s eyes appeared to follow you. I didn’t realize that was a thing outside of Scooby Doo cartoons before then.
A not-so-great experience. I signed up for a special event at Versailles. “Come, see the fountains lit-up at night, with added music and dance.” So I got there, and was shepherded into the Hall of Mirrors, which was packed with people, shoulder-to-shoulder, except for a cordoned-off area in the center. A small orchestra started playing Renaissance music (which I HATE), and some Renaissance dancers came out. The performance went on and on, and the audience had to stand throughout the entire thing, even those with small children. We were not permitted to leave. I tried. I think the concert lasted over an hour, before we were released into the grounds with the fountains.
It’s been at least two years since my last museum visit, and I don’t remember which museum it was exactly, but let’s say the Natural History Museum. You know how some museums have cards to write down your experiences and pin on a public board? They are printed at the top with: “I went to the Natural History Museum and…”, and some kid had completed the sentence with “I pooped”.
Good old toilet humour. Not my favourite, but a solid number 2.
The Chicago Field Museum has a “Dozin’ With The Dinosaurs” event where you bring the kids and stay overnight and they have various activities going on. The area we were assigned to was the prehistoric life exhibit (despite the name, if you didn’t have the right tickets you were assigned elsewhere) and we found a spot next to some theropod predator and went to look around. When we came back, it was super crowded with families all over. No real surprise, but made you wonder how any sleep would be had.
As we explored further, I noticed that no one was in the Ice Age exhibits. No one. I checked and double-checked the map of allowed locations and this untouched land was in fact open, it’s just that everyone got as far as the dinosaurs and called it good. Just as the lights were going out, we scooped up our gear and hustled to the blessed silence and solitude under the watchful mammoths. A few people walked past early on, going to the bathrooms, and one or two even commented “Hey, you got a nice spot!” but no one tried to intrude.
Sure, the collection was why we were all there but flipping a switch from “sandwiched between five other families” to “No one within 40’ of you” completely changed the mood and we all rightfully felt super-clever at having changed our circumstances. It could have been almost any museum stuff around us, it’s that we were all alone in the dark with it. Also, I’m WAY too old to spend a night in a sleeping bag on a concrete floor these days. Ouch.
The Ghibli Museum in Mitaka is interesting for its collection, of course, but more interesting in how weird it is inside. Getting around has the feel of an interactive art installation in itself with weird turns, dead ends, and odd connections from area to area.
The Minneapolis Institute of Art has (had?) an exhibit of some famous Hungarian (?) artist whose big works of art are writing tiny numbers in sequence, and films all of it. There was a little side note next to it saying there are two numbers that got skipped, discovered by the museum guards who were obviously bored. It was a fun couple minutes trying to discover what the missing numbers were. As much as I liked the museum, that piece really stood out to me.
Dropped in to say almost exactly the same thing. The only difference being that I ended up finding a couple of café tables under the trees, with a little lemonade cart. The server that manned it let me keep the little glass with a cute “Poupie” character on it.
