Slowing Down For Art: Introducing a Series on Writing, Reflection, and Pedagogy in Museums
I don’t know how many times my mom took me to the museum. I can’t remember if it was just one visit or more or if my memories are bits of stories she shared. Now, as I work to remember, it feels a bit like making a collage.
The clearest memories are probably from about 1984–1986. We are at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. I feel certain that we would have gone on a Sunday because Saturdays were for cleaning and errands. We wouldn’t have ventured out to the museum on a day reserved for scrubbing floors, grocery shopping, and laundry. Museum trips would have only been on Sundays.
The Sunday, in my mind, was later in the day because I feel like we were rushed. My mom didn’t watch the clock for good or bad. I don’t know if my mom was rushing or the museum staff told us we didn’t have long in the galleries because it was almost closing time, but I remember moving quickly and wanting to slow down.
I think we were in the Ancient World gallery. The map above reminds me that we most likely only made it through the first few galleries. I remember peering through glass cases and knowing the pieces were old but not knowing much more. So many questions raced through my mind: How did the pieces get there? How did things so old and from so far away end up so close to my home? Did the people who used these plates and bowls have kids like me? Did their kids have to wash dishes and scrub floors on Saturday, and did they have to do it over if they didn’t do a good job the first time? What made these objects important enough to be in a building this big? Would our bowls and plates end up in a museum one day too? If they did, it would probably only be the dishes in the brown cabinet in the dining room. Those were already behind glass, and I couldn’t touch them. I don’t remember talking in the museum.
Now I wonder, did my mom tell me I needed to be quiet, or did I know to do so because the museum felt like a church? Before my little brother, I was an only child who liked to talk. I remember feeling like I could sink into the quiet. While too much quiet usually made me feel like I was drowning, the museum quiet felt good.
I remember wanting to take my time with the quiet. I tried to move slowly. I wanted the objects to not be behind glass so I could touch and play house with them like my play dishes at home. I wanted to make up stories about the people who used these pitchers and bowls. I wondered why things that looked like everyday objects, not art like paintings I knew from books, were in this space. I don’t think I asked my mom any questions. I don’t think I spoke at all.
I do remember begging her to take me back. Everything is fuzzy, though. Did she take me back again? Was this one trip to the museum the only time we went together? I don’t know, but the experience made a mark, whether one time or ten. I regret not having asked her if she remembered our visit, but I wonder if she would have remembered. As a mom, my kids ask me about a park or field trip, and I sometimes draw a complete blank. It isn’t that I don’t care. I’m sure that it was the case that during that moment on the playground with the wooden castle and pirate ship or the field trip where someone got sick on the bus, I was probably thinking of too many things at once, like whether or not I would have time to scrub the kitchen floor and respond to emails after their bedtime. I am sure, so many things ran through my mind then, and now I don’t remember any of them.
So many decades later, something keeps pulling me back to this museum trip with my mom. This memory has stayed with me even with its fuzziness. I think it’s because of the nostalgia and my desire to feel what I remember feeling at that moment: The museum gave me this feeling of quiet and pause, different from the rush of weekend activities. The objects were both recognizable and different. My mom was offered quiet too. There was no pressure to talk or perform. It was just my mom and me.
This semester, I’ve made it a point to visit the museum on campus almost every week. I’m also visiting museums during my periods of travel. I’m teaching a course, Rhetoric and Social Justice, and I’ve curated an exhibition to accompany my class. I am at museums often for work, but my visits are also personal: I go for quiet. I go to both disconnect and connect. I go to slow down. I go to heal.
This is the first post in a series about my experience with museums, art, writing, and pedagogy. I plan to reflect on questions, memories, and practices. Here are a few questions I hope to work with:
- My first museum visit offered the kind of quiet that welcomed or invited me to feel like I could pause, but museums can also be places where people may feel they have to perform or feel unwelcome if they don’t have an art background. How can we disrupt this and create opportunities that invite a range of questions and experiences? What role might reflective writing offer in this process?
- While this memory I hold may appear to paint museums as idyllic spaces, I know that institutions such as museums have caused harm through curatorial practices. How do we reconcile with contested museum spaces?
- What resources are available for those wanting to incorporate museum visits into their classroom teaching or to support community writing?
- What does it mean for me to slow down with art?
- How does being in a space with numerous pathways to being in conversation with art offer an opportunity for play? For imagination? For building community? For listening?
- Who inspires my museum and writing pedagogy?
- How did I construct my class? What kinds of writing and research activites invite reflection and discussion around art?
I hope to share my future museum visits and some of my pedagogical practices through reflections and pictures. I hope this might be a space for learning and reflecting through art and writing. I hope this might be a space for me to slow down, and I invite you to slow down with me.
