Why was the gift of the trip to the MFA so important to me? It's a long story, but some of my earliest memories, quite literally, are of the MFA Boston. As a very young child I would spend weekends with my grandfather who lived down the street from the MFA, with my hands firmly in my pockets, following him through the museum.We never walked through the whole museum, just to the rooms with the paintings that he wanted to see. It seemed to me that we spent days at a time sitting looking at paintings. I know it was just hours. Every once in a while my grandfather would exhale or let out a,”Hmmmm”, get up, and walk over to a painting, adjust his glasses, and lean in to get abetter look, zooming in as close as the docents would allow. I never minded these trips, and still don’t. In high school, if the headmaster would call my father to say that I had skipped school that day, my dad knew exactly where I had been. When he would pick me up that evening at the bus station he would hold out his hand, palm up. I instantly knew he knew, and would place the small, brightly colored lapel pin that they gave you when you paid your entry fee in his open palm. Nothing was ever said. (When I opened my first gallery, my father handed me a cherry wood box. When I looked inside, it was full of those lapel pins.) The house that I grew up in, as well as my grandparents house on Marlborough Street, have since been sold. So going to the MFA fills in for them. It's the place that I can go to and remember my childhood, my adolescence, and even important times in my adult life. It is home.
No comments:
Post a Comment