museums as quiet places to meet the muses?

Among the weekly radio conversations from Krista Tippett is one with visual storyteller Maira Kalman.

The conversation included an observation about museums that gives pause for consideration in the noisy, distracted, distractable digital times that we inhabit.

The link included both transcript and audio playback,

https://onbeing.org/programs/maira-kalman-daily-things-to-fall-in-love-with-jan2019/

... Ms. Tippett: ...something you both portray in your work and model, is honoring meditative spaces or even contemplative spaces in the everyday, but also in public life, like parks or museums. I think of libraries in this way as well. Do you think about it that way?

Ms. Kalman: I absolutely think that a museum is one of the deepest places of meditation that there could be, maybe even more than a library, because you're looking. In a museum, you're not reading — I mean, you're reading a little bit, but you're basically just wandering and looking. And once again, the function of the brain, what happens to the brain is very different than, I don't know, than being in a supermarket — even though I love being in a supermarket. So wait a minute. I love supermarkets. I love to look at all the packaging. To me, that's a little bit like a museum. But that's a digression. I think that we have the opportunity to understand silence around us, and really looking, all the time. There's always the opportunity. And there's never a lack of things to look at, and there's never a lack of time not to talk.

Ms. Tippett: Museums are just among the very few silent places in culture, where that is part of the element of the experience. It's actually very unusual. I guess when we go to a concert — I guess there are places we listen. But there's not…

Ms. Kalman: Right, it's different than looking at something and not talking and absorbing it in that way. If you approach it the right way and don't trudge through too many things that you can't stand, it really gives you a sense of inspiration and clarity in your life.

Ms. Tippett: I spoke to Ann Hamilton a couple of years ago, and she used this phrase: "alone, together." I think that's the other thing. It's different from being at a concert or a performance, where you're having a communal, collective experience, because it's both in a museum. You're having a very personal meander, and what you're paying attention to, you're choosing. And yet you are not alone.

Ms. Kalman: I spend Fridays at the Met for two reasons: One, because I have an exhibit at the Met, an installation with my son, which is a recreation of my mother's closet. It's in the American wing, and it's a wonderful — my mother only wore white, and she was very precise about her clothing and about her closet. And her closet really was a work of art, in its way. So it's now at the Met, I'm happy to say.

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