The Museum Afternoon

Two to three hours. Walk slow. Stop when something stops you.

The museum date works because of the permission it gives you to look at things together and say what you actually think about them. Not what you’re supposed to think. Not the correct interpretation. What you actually see, what you actually feel, what the thing in front of you actually does to you. That kind of honesty is harder to come by in a restaurant or a bar. The art demands a response, and the response tells you something.

Don’t try to see everything. That’s the mistake most people make — moving through room after room at a pace designed to cover ground rather than encounter anything. Pick a section, or wander until something stops you, and then stop. Really stop. Stand in front of it for longer than feels comfortable. See if the other person is seeing the same thing you’re seeing.

The conversation you want happens in front of specific pieces, not in the gift shop at the end. What does it look like to you. What do you think it was about. Does it do anything to you. Is there a version of this that you’d want to live with. These are easy questions to ask in front of a painting that they’d be impossible to ask anywhere else.

Most major art museums have a day or evening when admission is free or reduced — Friday evenings are a common choice (check the museum’s website; several major institutions are free all the time, and most have discounted or waived admission for at least one weekday evening). A membership is worth buying if you’ll go more than twice a year; it often pays for itself at two visits and removes the transactional feeling from going.

After, find the museum café if it’s good (some of them genuinely are) or a nearby restaurant. Don’t rush out. Let the afternoon extend. The conversation has material now — things you saw, things you disagreed about, something one of you noticed that the other missed entirely.

Find your local equivalent

Every city has something. Art museums, history museums, natural history museums, science centers — the format transfers across all of them. The smaller regional museum is often better for this than the major encyclopedic one, because you can actually slow down without feeling the weight of everything you’re not seeing. University art museums are consistently underutilized and frequently excellent.

Institutions worth a trip

The Art Institute of Chicago is one of the best art museums in the world and free on Thursday evenings. LACMA and the Getty in Los Angeles, with the Getty having the better setting. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston — the building itself is the experience. The Menil Collection in Houston is free always and one of the most intimate major collections in the country. The DIA in Detroit. The Walker in Minneapolis. Go somewhere you’ve been meaning to go.

going-out  ·  any-stage  ·  afternoon  ·  museum  ·  art  ·  slow  ·  conversation  ·  free-or-cheap  ·  cultural  ·  discovery