13 Comments
User's avatar
David Roberts's avatar

Lovely description of the power of art.

I have a few favorite paintings I visit at the Met.

My favorite is Brueghel's Harvesters. The world it creates gives me a sense of peace.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Harvesters_(painting)

Expand full comment
Lev Raphael's avatar

It's wonderful to have favorites you can visit when you like. I grew up falling in love with Starry Night and Guernica at MOMA. Got to see them very very young.

Expand full comment
Susan Oleksiw's avatar

You've captured what I think many children feel--the world of beauty and possibility found nowhere else. I loved going to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where there was only artwork and I could lose myself in all of it. I especially loved the harpsichords and the massive Chinese Buddha's.

Expand full comment
Lev Raphael's avatar

Yes, that's it: the world of beauty and possibility.

Expand full comment
David Nash's avatar

I’ve felt the same way about the Met, Lev. Egyptian, Islamic, Greco Roman, Medieval / Renaissance, Modern - there’s so many faiths under one roof. Every wing, every exhibit communities some truth in way like nothing else I’ve experienced.

Expand full comment
Lev Raphael's avatar

I loved to wander there. Usually I headed to the armor, then to the Greek & Roman statuary,

Expand full comment
X. P. Callahan's avatar

Oh my. This is heartrending. I am glad you had this source of inspiration and hope as a child and survived to remember it.

Expand full comment
Lev Raphael's avatar

Thanks. I had lots of inspiration from my mother as well....

Expand full comment
Dennis Martin Brooks's avatar

Beautiful, touching. View of city, museum and painting with a flash moment of family adding to the whole picture.

Expand full comment
Nancy Hesting's avatar

I grew up in Chicago and had the great fortune of having The Art Institute to visit often. A person can spend all day at an art museum and then return the next day to do it all over again. My husband and I spent a month in France last September and marveled at the wonders of the Louvre, however, I fell in love with the Van Gogh exhibit at the Musee d'Orsay. Got back to our B&B and began to read an exceptional bio of Van Gogh written by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. What a tortured soul Van Gogh was.

Expand full comment
Lev Raphael's avatar

I love the Art Institute and have been going there since the 1980s--amazing collection and terrific exhibitions and just 4 hours by train (I gave up on driving because the traffic is insane). The first one we saw was a mind-blowing Sargent show that was gigantic. More recently, a Magritte exhibition, beautifully mounted.

Ah, but Paris! The Louvre, the Musée D'Orsay, The Cluny, The Rodin, The Picasso--just to start. One funny note: there was a Seurat exhibition there but the Art Institute didn't lend "La Grande Jatte" and we were thrilled that we had seen it in situ so many many times.

Expand full comment
Nancy Hesting's avatar

We had a funny thing happen to us at The Louvre. Well, not really funny. We were just leaving and a couple were just entering and the man was screaming at his wife "you get over here right now" along with other gems such as that like she was a puppy dog. It was ugly. Wrote a short story about it.

Expand full comment
Lev Raphael's avatar

Wow. It's amazing how badly people can behave in museums abroad. Americans. I avoided them at the Louvre and at Versailles--too many of them were rude and loud. One guy actually sat down on the base of a Greek statue and was about to lean back against it before the guard stopped him. He was unapologetic: "There aren't any chairs."

Expand full comment