How Arting Changed Me For the Better

On a trip to Boston, I visited the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (BMFA) by myself.  I usually visit museums with others, even if we view art at our own pace. Before Arting, I only went alone when traveling, mostly to pass the time. Yes, I was traveling and went to the museum to pass the time. But after Arting, I went with fresh eyes and an open mind.

Arting gave me a new relationship to art. My Arting experience brought to the surface things I should have known but had not yet realized consciously.

Come with me as I explore the BMFA, and my insights from Arting.

Artists can surprise you

I used to have preconceived notions of artists (usually from a familiarity with a few of their best-known works). Now I stay open because I’ve learned how much artists grow in their art, experiment, change and have different things to say to you at different times in their lives. As do we. The BMFA had a Dali exhibition going on. While I find Dali intriguing intellectually, I find his Surrealist art (e.g. The Persistence of Memory, The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory) was not the whole picture.  Dali spent a lot of time learning from the classics.

Take a look.

To your left is Dali’s painting, The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can be Used As a Table, which used Vermeer’s The Art of Painting as his source for Vermeer himself.

Or below, you can see Dali’s Two Adolescents which used Michaelangelo’s David and the Creation of Adam as his inspiration.

You Never Know What You Might Find

Not knowing, means that going to museum is an adventure. I used to think of museums as being kind of stuffy. Hard marble floors, paintings in old frames hung on walls, crowds to navigate. But those were museums of old. Wondering around the BMFA, I found some really cool and unexpected things. Like a self-portrait of Sarah Bernhardt as a Sphinx. Who knew she sculpted as well as acted?

Or Yoshitomo Nara’s Your Dog. I want one of these.

Museums Grow and Evolve

I found an Arting environment at the BMFA, which was designed to engage the audience.

The BMFA had an exhibition called Power of the People: The Art of Democracy.

In addition to seeing art like this to your right, or below.

Students from Emerson College performed Activating Kore 670: Women’s Voices and Greek Tragedy, a short play that adapted excerpts from Greek tragedies, with the gallery where these pieces were exhibited. The play was performed by women in roles traditionally performed by men to reveal gender bias. The actors engaged the audience in multiple ways from wearing masks to holding candles to  answering questions.

After years of Arting, my trips to museums have now been infused with a sense of exploration, playfulness and the search for interactive experiences. Arting has made my life and myself better for the experience.

We’d love to hear from you.

What recent experiences have you had with art that surprised you? 

What artist or museum was not what you had pictured and why?