Art on the Run
Me pausing just long enough to get a photo with Edward Hopper's Nighthawks in 2025 I love art , but I’m a terrible museum visitor. This flaw is clear every time I enter a museum or gallery, whether it’s somewhere in Europe, New York’s Chelsea or Museum Mile, or at the Cleveland Museum of Art in my hometown. I've written before about being a dilettante . There's a connection between my superficiality and how quickly I move through museums, skimming content and jumping from one recognizable piece to another, rarely taking the time to truly absorb anything. What’s my problem? While I might have undiagnosed attention deficit disorder, I suspect that my character flaw of impatience is more responsible for why museums make me restless. I know that slow viewing, like the close reading of a poem (I was an English major, after all), offers many rewards. I've attended museum programs and lectures that made me slow down, participate in docent-led dialogue, or listen to an expert....
