Missing Art

Sometimes I find myself in a location where I know there is a great deal of art to be seen and possibly enjoyed, but do not get to see it. This was the case with my recent trip to Washington DC where there are the wonderfully rich Smithsonian Museums, besides the many other galleries. It has happened before, travelling for work in San Francisco, Chicago and yet not attending their famous museums.

There are always excuses. Usually the excuse is time. This time, I was on the road between different family members' homes and on my way to an alumni meeting for my college. The small gallery at my college was closed and I thought to ask the Alumni Relations Director to open it and allow us to see the current exhibit but did not want to be a bother. In the past, I have decided there were too many business meetings and the museum trip was not possible to add. I have argued that the museum was too far away and so would take too much time in to-ing and fro-ing. Sometimes, the excuse is that I am tired. Other times it has been the weather. Excuses are easy to find.

The truth is that I regret these lost opportunities. This time, for example, I wish that I had made time to go to the National Gallery of Art simply because it offers the comfort of the familiar and would have calmed me amidst the family bustle. Seeing the art at the college would have revived me during the dull patter of gossiping divisions after brainstorming sessions and powerpoint presentations. I would have better enjoyed my many travels for work had I taken advantage of the locations to which I was required to fly. The weather would have been irrelevant once inside the cosy sanctuary of a desolate museum on a stormy day.

I live in a city with so many galleries and museums that it is inevitable I would miss some shows. But I miss so many more simply out of laziness. After a long week of work, I do not spend Friday evening at one of the free entries to world class museums. On a frigid or muggy day, I do not wander into the temperate climate of a gallery. If I did, I might find that I was less concerned with a friend's rebuff, with a less than stellar evaluation, with the nonsense agitation of life in the Big City. I convince myself that I am too tired, overwhelmed, distraught to look at another's work of passion when in fact that would relieve the headache far better.

Looking at art fills me with new thoughts. Even if the thoughts reflect my dislike of the art I see, the occasion wipes my mind of the minutiae that confound me, presenting instead alternative neuronal pathways. Or so it seems. Sometimes, I discover that I am filled not with thought but with visions and am grateful that art somehow managed to silence the language of my mind- even if only briefly.

It should be possible to make time for art. It is possible. It is merely a choice. Otherwise I miss it. The less we attend these art events, the fewer of them there will be to enjoy. And that I would really miss.