For
those of you who know me and Sarah, you might know that I went to art
school and two of Sarah's four degrees (yes you read that right,
she's crazy) are in Art History. What you may not know is it's a
practical miracle that I passed my general art history courses in
school at all. I was even at the advantage of being able to understand
everything our professor said (apparently some students had a hard
time deciphering her thick Massachusetts accent, to which I'd say
'what accent?'). So needless to say when I learned of Museum Hack
tours a while back my interest was piqued.
Before
we move on, what's Museum Hack you say? Ugh, not you too! A
surprising number of Sarah's and my friends and acquaintances had
never heard of Museum Hack, which may not be surprising except many
of them were former colleagues of ours at ….museums. Now granted
many of them no longer work in the museum field, but I didn't think
Sarah and I were the nerdiest of our friends (I mean don't get me
wrong, I know we're up there, like way up there: see above where we
talked about Sarah's problem with accumulating degrees). And I hope
we don't spend the most amount of time in the abyss (aka: the
internet) of all our friends, but maybe we do? Anyways, I digress,
Museum Hack leads
unconventional tours in some of the world's best museums.
The
first selfie Sarah insisted I take of the day, look at those 10 AM
smiles! Look at how much her phone cleared up our skin!
Saturday Sarah and I traveled into NYC so that I could take one of these said
tours to blog about while, as she would say, Sarah 'visited some old
friends' at the Neue Galerie.
I opted to take the Un-Highlights tour at the Met.
When I arrived and met the tour guide, Anna,
the rest of the group wasn't around. At this point she, most likely
joking (though I'd never want to presume), told me to write only mean
things about her. As someone who tries their best to follow the
directions, challenge accepted Anna! Let's Roll!
I
think Anna wanted to ditch us. The speed at which she walked from
place to place in the museum makes me realize that moving through a
crowd is an art form all its own and can be done faster than I've
been doing it (though Sarah would say I'm pretty good at it, and is
going to hate reading that I know it can be done faster now). But
it's amazing no one got lost, or that we weren't subjected at any
point to the lifeguard-like call of a museum guard shouting down the
hall not to run. I can only gather that this could be attributed to
one, though likely to some extent all, of three factors:
1.
Since Anna said she had 8 hours worth of material to chose from for
our two-hour tour, she wanted to waste no time in hitting the most of
it. We're also left with the paradoxical question of is it 8 hours
worth at breakneck speed moving from place to place, or 8 hours for
the average moving human being?
2.
So that we don't pick up any extra, un-official members to our tour
group. Which I think we kind of did once, but I think Anna addressed
it. However, it was all so fast and quiet that one can only
speculate. Geez, where's the reality TV throwdown drama in that?
3.
Anna has lived in New York City for too long, and should probably
heed her mother's wishes to move closer to home, because honestly
people tend to move less fast pretty much anywhere else in America.
Fact: Once in Baltimore I had a bus driver very unhurriedly tell me
where I was and how to get where I was going...and no one on the bus
seemed the least bit annoyed that this added 30 seconds to their
commute! That would never happen up here in the great northeast.
Me
trying to keep up. Anna somewhere in the distance. Between us,
thankfully, other members of our tour group.
Once
you get over the fact that Anna wasted a huge life opportunity and
could have gotten the gold medal in speed walking (who even decided
that was a sport?!) in Rio, you realize she might only have balls and
booty on the brain. No, we're not talking about sports anymore, and
no, sadly we are not becoming pirates (we could have captured Robert
Feke! C'mon!). If you're looking for a tour where you might hear the
word 'castration' in relation to male singers, be told a story that
ends with the possibility of a secret stash of ancient 'junk' being
stored in the Vatican, talk about the first piece of intentional art
in relation to Kim Kardashian, or find out how a depiction of Cupid
peeing through a ring of leaves onto Venus is the Venetian equivalent
of a 'wink, wink, nudge, nudge', well I think you know what tour you
might like. I will say that while the Museum Hack tour I went on is
for ages 16 and up, I might have a trio of male cousins ages 8 to 13
who would have immensely enjoyed all the more off color topics of
discussion.
When
we weren't talking about all the fun bits of a body, it was all
about the booze. It's clear that someone should watch out for Anna at
parties because she might just let the spirits move her a bit too
much (you got that pun, right? Trying too hard? Maybe...I won't
promise it will get any better). After finding out about the
wonders of an autonomous drinking game vessel, the perfect present
for a frat boy (or fraternity brother as my dad would say; being a
Delta Kappa himself, he takes it seriously), we were tasked with
finding our own item in the museum that we would want to take to a
party. Which was actually a real challenge given the speed at which
we zipped around the museum. Also because me and my camera phone
don't always get along. I tend think 'my phone doesn't need a great
camera, that's what I have all my cameras for!' ...hah!
The
clearest photo my phone took all day, and the stillest Anna ever
stood!
Without
ruining any stories too much, in case you find yourself on a Museum
Hack tour, I will say that most stories had ….hmmm, interesting
morals. One of my favorites being 'not all art is good, and sometimes
even the artist agrees with you'. Because seriously, true on all
counts. Also, during the course of the story that lead to that moral,
thanks Anna for putting the totally horrifying thought of being an
early adopter of cataract surgery into my imagination. Anna: casually
passing out nightmares at the museum since who knows when. She had a
very graphic quality to her storytelling, which while engaging, easily
led to that creepy crawly feeling you get when a mental image goes
just a tad too far. Like, can I imagine drizzling olive oil laden
with an ancient olympic athlete's sweat, dirt, hair and skin flecks
in it over my breakfast? Yeah, I have a concrete idea of how gross
that just might be. Would I have ever thought of it had I not gone on
this tour? No, probably not, never. The good news here folks is that
the initial tagline to remember when we were looking at that
particular statue, 'if it has a stick up it's ass, it's Roman', was
something Sarah totally understood and got a good chuckle out of. And
let's face it, that is way easier to remember than anything I learned
in art history.
Our
tour came to its conclusion with the sharing of our party objects. I
chose a metal goblet of sorts because A) it's shiny and B) I can't
bite through it, which are two things I'm drawn to, you know, for
varying reasons, not because I've ever accidentally bitten through a
drinking glass...while sober...and drinking water...in the middle of
the afternoon. Certainly not. It was not the most exciting choice.
One other member of our tour did choose perhaps the exact same item
to take a picture of, so zero points to me for originality, but
honestly I'm just glad my phone agreed to take a picture of something
without being a total blur as I tried not to get lost.
Way
classier than a red solo cup!
Hopefully
this hasn't been too much of a mean girl party a la Le
Banquet Rousseau (you know the most surprising thing might actually
be that I paid attention on at least 95% of this tour) aimed towards
Anna. But if it was, it's obviously because she's the worst, gosh, I
thought you'd know that by now. Though she almost redeemed herself by
surprising us with little Polaroid (JK we all know Fujifilm was the
one to step up to the plate to save Polaroid's aesthetic with
Instax) prints of us posing with sculptures.
I
think I captured this bear's doofiness quite well...
Sarah
and I continued our day by....obviously going to another museum. The
Cooper Hewitt was
amazing, and that takes us to our final selfie of the day, and who
knows, maybe I'll see you next Tuesday!
Look
at those 5 PM faces! Look how much Sarah's phone made my dark sunken
eyes rise to the occasion!
Disclaimer:
sometimes sarcasm doesn't come across the written word well. Take it
all with a grain of salt, Anna was great and the tour was obviously a
blast!
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