TED LASSO AND THE VAN GOGH’S SUNFLOWERS

I am not a big football fan but I love Ted Lasso’s TV movie where the sport is used as an excuse to tell great stories, personal stories. In one of the third season’s chapters, Ted is visiting Amsterdam to play a match in the iconic Johan Cruyff hometown. Both -he and the team- are going through a difficult time. Ted is going through a personal crisis when he learns that his ex is having an affair with his former marriage counselor. The team is getting beaten game after game. Both seem to have lost their essence. That makes them special and unique. The magic.

And Ted will find it in… the Van Gogh Museum contemplating the iconic sunflower painting! Yes. And this is where the movie (thanks of course to the brilliant scriptwriters) takes a spectacular turn from which we museum professionals can learn something.

Ted gazes lonely at the painting, trying to find himself, when he is gently approached by a Museum employee. This great professional is going to do four things to make the miracle happen and give Ted the meaning to his life that he is looking for:

- First of all, he has observed him carefully and this has allowed him to choose very carefully the words he is going to use to address him.

- In his first interaction he synthesizes a very powerful message from Van Gogh himself that fully connects with Ted’s state of mind. The professional quotes a short text from one of the artist’s famous letters:

“One doesn’t expect to get from life what one has already learned it cannot give. Rather, one begins to see that life is a kind of sowing time and the harvest is not yet here.”

-And once he has connected emotionally with Ted, he moves forward in the context of the artist to reinforce that connection that will help Ted find what he is looking for. He explains that the artist was the son of a humble preacher but that despite his inner demons he never stopped searching for beauty. Bingo! Second connection with Ted: there you have what you are looking for, beauty. The beauty that you may not be able to see but that you must help to plant here and now with what you do every day. Because when you find beauty, you find inspiration… if that is, you stay as determined as Vincent. Ted’s mind clicks: find beauty, find inspiration, and determination. Never stop, no matter how many failures. That’s the path. He has finally got what he is looking for. Failures are part of the path. Ted was on the right path not lost because he knows he was doing what he means to do.

-As a final precious minué between the museum guide and Ted, a lovely reference of the last one to their childhood memories; the Kansas state flower where Ted comes from is…yes, the sunflower! With this final connection, everything suddenly makes sense; his origins, his nowadays mood, and a painting that has helped him to find himself.

The main output of Ted’s Museum visit is that we have one Ted before and another one after the visit, and that is exactly what we are trying to achieve as a Museum professional; to be transformative, isn’t it? This is the real impact that we as professionals should try to make on our visitors. If we succeed, all the effort, the heartaches, the difficulties, the hours of work (even the nightmares) will have been worth it.

The life of those who visit us and spend some time of their precious lives with us. We need to create those Bingo Ted Lasso moments every day in our museums. We just need to want to do it, dance our special “minué” (it can be salsa or hip hop or… whatever you prefer) with our special visitor that is waiting for us right now, right there. Do we dare to dance with them?