The Stone

The building on the inside brings me straight back to a classical portrayal of the fancy art museum. The first exhibit has remained the first exhibit here, though I sense that few pay its flossy whiteness much head. In the center, not more than ten feet from the over sized front doors, faces Orpheus and Cerberus, lulling new comers into a special cave of Hades, bypassing Charon and the murky Lethe. Orpheus's lyre vibrates to the sound of many voices talking. Even Cerberus places a role here while entranced by the musical cacophony: each one of his three heads guards a direction. One head faces the inside of the museum, watching those who are brave enough to intrude on this majestic mausoleum of stone. Another faces the front, guarding this place from any ill will that would dare enter. The last lonely head seems to star down, at the ground. It is said that the most sinful part of our bodies are our feet, for they are the only part the Bible does not demand we clean. I think this downward doting muzzle searches through the sins we tread with us, judging whether we are fit to walk the polished halls. Two beautiful busts straddle the first two interior pillars, facing the soft leather waiting seats across from the entrance. They are gorgeous Greek woman, all bosom and little toga. There words carved into the side of one of these pillars, “GUY LOWELL” and below “ARCHITECT” “1909”. All who enter are unknowingly worshiping at his alter. A vase of sunflowers is opposite the toga-less bust, and I am reminded of the Japanese erotic painter who used to paint woman nude from off the street, posing them with sunflowers. These rare paintings are what Van Gogh saw when he went to visit Japan, this is where Van Gogh's sunflowers come from. Art coming from art coming from women. It makes sense to me, just as any other gorgeous nude woman in my arms makes me feel like I am in contact with something divine, something deliberate and dazzling and premeditated in its beauty. This splash of undead color makes me feel that the museum as an entity wants the viewer to recognize the interaction between the overwhelming porcelain whites and marbled halls, with true natural beauty. Maybe that is why so many artists over time have focused on drawing woman: man made art attempting to capture the lithe edges of nature beautiful.

Just to the proud left from here is the ticket desk. Each and every visit I have made to the MFA has began here, and like an old ritual I glide into line. My tickets are always free because I'm a student at an Avenue of the Arts college. A small collection of schools on Huntington Avenue that all have special partnerships with the MFA to provide free admission and discounts for students. I dread the day when this place is no longer free to enter, but at a cost only. To counter this I have already decided that when it is no longer free for me to enter, I will buy memberships and use them also as tax deductions, allowing me constant access to art as well as write offs for a great cause. The membership line is always pretty empty I've noticed, at least in comparison to the general admission line. The people behind the counter are friendly and more than once have bantered with me while I picked up my ticket. What I appreciate most about this aspect of the building is actually the LCDs on the wall behind them. I have walked through constant hall after hall while writing, and there are pieces of art in exhibits that are nice, but have not truly impressed me. Yet here on the hanging monitors, I find myself faced with art that I can tell I've seen, but somehow am far more impressed by. I blame this effect on the presentation: flashing screens and gliding colors help to contrast the random photos of art with information and color, like a moth to the light. Why had I not realized their majesty before? Part of what makes a museum so great is actually what makes it so bad. The way art is presented in endless hall after hall, side by side by side by side, creates a monotony on my sense, makes it hard to pick up on art that is more subtle. So every time I get my ticket, I state at the screens, hoping to be graced with a new impression of an old memory.

Following little plants like mile markers, leading me no where but providing a sense of the moment passing, I find the Sharf Visitor Center hidden in the middle. This could be called the operations headquarters of this ancient castle. Middle ages ladies are crocheting consumers questions, armed to the teeth with large mac desktops, and TV's all over the walls showing sideshows. There is a pamphlet here on the table near by about joining. Surprisingly they have no life membership option that I can find, so I ask. Apparently there used to be but it was removed (so they could make more money I'm sure). I also learn that they have 85 thousand members, but their members do not usually outnumber the many visitors who come and go. They explain to me the museums deal with the Avenue of the Arts schools, and smile. I ask them what role they feel they play in the community, in a few or less words tell me that their role in the community is that of an educator, helping to bring cultural importance to the masses. They say they provide this to everyone by making the museum from to all after 4pm on Wednesdays, by hosting rare traveling exhibits and shows. They have a movie theater for anyone to go watch a movie in. There is the book store for shopping, a cafeteria for eating, and they claim to be hallmark part of Boston, in so many words. This visitor center is something to behold itself. The overall conglomeration of customer service, technology, and spacious contemporary structural design make it a very pleasing room on the eyes. It reminds me of the ICA on the inside, very new and fresh and shining. I like it- like the smell of a new car. They have art in here too, not the room couldn't be called art alone: Jim Dine took etchings and sketches and lithographs of his tools, and he made they all seem like the tools are alive with personality by merely placing them in the right position, but altering nothing else. I can relate to the tools, have used them all before while building robots or fixing cars in high school. This is an art I can relate to, understand in my core. The large circular center room before this is also impressive: look up and you find Sargent watching over you, yet somehow you realize you are a full floor below where Sargent's work hangs. They have slanted mirrors in the center, so even from down here you can get a good look at the ceiling that hugs the walls.

There is an aspect of the building that is as obdurate and stolid as time eternal, and as knowledgeable: the guards that walk the halls and watch us. While naturally my attitude toward police like figures is not exactly renown, I am somehow not bothered by the guards. I think part of it is that they all wear suits. They don't wear imposing uniforms, or carry guns. They merely wear suits. Hell, I wear suits, if only because they look nice. They also don't pester you generally: they are as much the viewer to this collection, as you are, if not more since they get to view the art through the masses of people seeing art, a perspective that Walker Percy would claim helps restore the authenticity to the experience that is usually deprived. I know many of the ticket guards by face now: the Slovakian, the long haired hippie, the old man (though there are a lot of old men). If you talk to them they often know more than you'd expect about the artwork, though not all are very talkative. They same people man the bag check room day after day I've noticed, and it has become a comfort, the familiar employees lining the walls as I wander.

In the back of the museum, right behind the Fenway entrance, is this marvelous stone stair case that connects the second and first floor again. Built in memory of Robert Evans by his beloved wife, the concrete feels like an interior anquer for the rear of the building, hold down the Fenway entrance from disappearing all together. I'm fairly sure that his entire marble and granite stair case was transported from the old site of the museum by Copley, and that his very stair case was the first thing people would see upon entering: porcelain statues filling coves, paintings hanging from every flat wall. In the dark and murky old photos they have hanging around, it looks very enticing and mysterious. I would just love to have seen it when it was originally there so long ago. Yet because I'm more used to walking down from the second floor to the first when I visit (yes, I have my own routes I follow) I feel like it is lost on me the full grandeur that was designed into these steps.