The Trip To The Museum, parts 1450 - 1453

1450. This all happened long ago when it was still possible to slam a phone down into its holder with the acoustical effect of anger. Agnes, sitting at her place at the dinner table, burst into tears, tears of familial pride.

1451. That trip to the museum left a lasting impression. The room of dark paintings and the sculpture did not interest her, what she found most interesting was the prize winning painting in the annual show. To Agnes it was not exactly the gray painting that captured her imagination but the conversation she overheard about it. "How can it be," she wondered, "that a picture could be twice rejected, and then subsequently win first prize?"

1452. A child of ten believes that adults know all there is to know about everything, and a child of thirteen knows that adults are all idiots and wrong about anything they ever talk about. Usually, some time between ten and thirteen years of age, some event occurs to cause this revolution in thinking: for Agnes it was this conversation about the gray painting. It was a positive proof that all important adult decisions were based on nothing at all.

1453. "Why couldn't I," she wondered, "next year, paint a big picture all red, or all orange, and then win first prize myself," she asked. She did not enter the museum again for a few years except to view the annual exhibits, and finally she entered her first picture in the annual competition. She was fifteen years old at the time. She did not do an abstract painting however, and she did not expect to win any prizes.

The Trip To The Museum, parts 1446 - 1449

1446. Agnes had experienced ear pulling and related affronts in school where she knew instinctively that she had to accept it, but in the museum it was a different matter. Since she did not know the secretary, and the secretary did not know her, at the right moment she snatched her ear free and fled out the door. But she was mistaken, the secretary did know her because she did part time book-keeping at her school. 

1447. She was one of those women who think that their authority extends far beyond the limits of the institutions in which they are employed, and firmly believed that their impulses had to be correct since they are able to find confirmation for their actions in the religious tracts they read all the time.

1448. Agnes went to the corner and waited for her mother to come and pick her up. On the way home she said not one word about what had happened in the museum, and hoped the incident was over but at dinner the phone rang and she had a sudden flash of fear that it was possible for some total stranger to track her down to her home and inform on her.

1449. Indeed it was the secretary book-keeper calling to tell her mother and father that Agnes was in the museum that afternoon looking at the dirty sculptures. Her father said, "To my way of thinking there aren't any dirty sculptures in the museum so I am not sure exactly what you are referring to." He was silent for a while listening, and then he said, "You simple-minded idiot, don't ever call here again, and he slammed the phone down into the receiver. 

The Trip To The Museum, parts 1442 - 1445

1442. Agnes was not sure what the secretary intended to do with her ear, but from her experience in school, she imagined that her ear would be conducted to the museum's equivalent of the principal's office, where it would receive a reprimand, and then a call would be placed to her parents.

1443. If you have been led someplace by the ear then probably you remember that it puts you in a position where, although you can't stand upright, nevertheless, you are compelled to try and walk as best you can, limping and hobbling along. Although the journey by pulled ear my not last very long, nevertheless it is conducive to a very rapid and deep thought processes.

1444. In a moment all of the injustices of human history seem to come flooding into your brain; entire scenes of the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch trials flash before your mind. Stumbling down the museum's marble steps trying to keep from falling, Agnes felt a connection to all those who have ever been unjustly accused of crimes they not only did not commit, but didn't even know were crimes. 

1445. It is being pulled by the ear by some idiot in a position of authority that surely gave rise to the Magna Carta. It is not that the Magna Carta was written immediately after the ear pulling, the document my have been written many decades after the event. It is the unjust punishment administered in a humiliating way that makes a person desire to upend society as they know it, and replace it with something else; anything else will usually suffice. 

The Trip To The Museum, parts 1438 - 1441

1438. The Greeks when modeling their figures liked to have the entire work consist of one complete piece of stone, but often because of the shape of the block, or the difficulties of the pose it was necessary to sculpt individual forms separately and attach then later by means of holes drilled in each piece and connected with a plug.

1439. This piecemeal form of sculptural construction is very noticeable, if the forms are undamaged one can see a seam, but if the form of an arm or leg is broken off, there is a hole where the connection had been. The statue that Agnes was looking at out of the corner of her eye was of this type. She was reluctant to have a look at it, but was extremely curious as to why there was a hole where the opposite of a hole should have been.

1440. She decided to have one last look at the Egyptian collection, but before she left the paintings room she walked up to the marble man and had a look at it. What she saw made absolutely on sense to her; it was inexplicable. She took a very close look, and suddenly felt a sharp pain in her right ear lobe. 

1441. It was thus that Agnes had her first introduction to the director's secretary, many years ago, by being led out of the room of the secret paintings and broken sculpture by the ear, as if she had been committing a crime by looking at a two thousand year old piece of marble with a hole in it. 

The Trip To The Museum, parts 1434 - 1437

1434. In these paintings most of the forms are swallowed up in murky shadows, but light from mysterious sources lights up a part of a face whose eyes turn toward heaven. In those eyes the moisture of future tears is rendered with sensitive delicacy. Along the lower eyelid one can see tiny strokes of almost white paint, tinted with a little ultramarine blue.

1435. Such was Mrs. Festini's description of those paintings as an adult; no ideas or categorizations crossed her mind at ten years old. These were paintings in a museum; therefore they must be great masterpieces, but even at ten years old she could feel that there was a direct connection between the meaningless first prize picture in the annual show and these figure paintings in the secret room. 

1436. Years later she summed up her childhood impressions saying. "These paintings were like the idiot children of royal families; the museum, like a palace, was their home. Because of the accident of their birth they were accorded the respect and admiration their ancestors were accustomed to receive from the masses, yet the entire situation made one acutely aware of the deficiencies of the system.

1437. All the while she was looking at these paintings, one after another, she was aware that in the corner of the room was a marble statue of a man on a pedestal. This was the notorious marble man with something supposedly broken off and glued back on that she had been told about. At that age she knew absolutely nothing about such things but she was curious.

The Trip To The Museum, parts 1430 - 1433

1430. Having finished with the annual exhibit Agnes returned again to the Egyptian room to look at jewelry that some Egyptians were supposed to have worn in their pyramids, and finally she worked up the nerve to have a look at the naked ladies.

1431. Agnes was shocked and disappointed with what she found in the formerly locked room. There is a category of paintings found in great abundance in small American museums. If Raphael painted a Madonna, there are a million Madonnas painted in Raphael's style. If Rubens painted some paintings full of half draped overweight women, others produced thousand of canvases that attempted to achieve the same effect.

1432. For each Rembrandt there are a million Rembrandt like paintings; for each Caravaggio, a million Caravaggisque canvasses. All of these works with 90 percent of their surfaces restored in museum workshops, made there way at the turn of 20th Century to American museums to satiate an appetite for European culture. 

1433. What these paintings are about as a rule, nobody knows. Some are religious, but more are mythological, and many are historical. They all share a desire to present unclothed figures in contorted poses in which agony, tragedy, despair and desperation plunge muscular men with blue tinted flesh toward moments of religious epiphany. 

The Trip To The Museum, parts 1426 - 1429

1426. From the Egyptian collection she went to a big room which had an exhibit of local artists held every year at the same time in the summer. Years later she would submit pieces to this exhibit every year.  Almost all of the pictures in this room were watercolors done of landscapes and flowers. Most had an unfinished look about them, and were framed in gold frames with various color mats. None of these pictures had prizes or ribbons.

 1427. Agnes was especially interested in the prize-winning paintings, but she was mystified as to why the pictures with prizes were singled out. First prize went to a gigantic painting almost six feet square; it was painted entirely light gray with very thick paint. She looked at the first prize painting for a while and was able to discover that down in the left hand corner there were some bumps in the paint, as if breadcrumbs had been painted over. 

1428. Although it won first prize, it did not have any frame and the edges were splotched. Next Agnes went through the entire room again and looked at the titles and prices of all the pictures. All of the watercolors in the gold frames had prices like two hundred dollars, or four hundred dollars, but the big gray first prize picture cost ten thousand dollars, and had won a five thousand dollar prize.

 1429. As she stood there looking at the price of the gray painting two older women came up and looked at the same painting, one said to the other. "This painting was submitted to the show last year and the year before and was rejected both times. This is his third attempt to get into this show, and now it has won the first prize."