“Visiting the Art Museum as a 55 Year-Old Black Girl, Ivy League Graduate and Possible Vandal”
As I age I’m taking time to explore the galaxy and put my Ivy League law school education to better use than reading contracts. I’m attending concerts and fairs, reading outside of my comfort zone, travelling and taking complete advantage of that older person privilege of sometimes speaking without a filter. In this “now or never” stage of life I often go alone.
So yesterday I visited the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles on my own. It was the usual art space, white, light filled galleries with an open air courtyard and the necessary café. The current exhibits are challenging, requiring you to understand the theatrical meanings of patterned floor coverings and painted benches and their relationship to an up-close video of skin. It also was on-trend with a display of garments. And this being LA, there was the requisite film related exhibit.
In Gallery II the art was arranged around the walls with a series of smaller exhibits in a row down the center. There were 8 to 12 non-black visitors. I noticed the security guard looking at me. I made a bee line towards her, passing her just a bit to her right side, as if she were merely a camera stand. Once passing her, I stood a distance behind her, out of her eye sight and considered a painting in the corner. A few beats later she pivoted, keeping me in her periphery. I’m a playful sort. I kept edging behind her back, staying just out of her sight. She kept pivoting. I continued to look at the painting. Then I surprised her by turning my head quickly in her direction. I saw that she had turned full frontal to look at me and only me in the corner. Our eyes met across the room. Not in that romantic coincidental way, but still in that destiny sort of way. We looked at each other for 5 or 6 seconds. I smiled. She smiled. I knew she knew. She knew I knew.
I moved onto other galleries and found more pivoting guards.
Guess that is a thing, for me.
In the courtyard I played with the purple chairs that spun like tops and enjoyed the view from the top floor windows.
I left with my pockets empty and the artwork intact. It turned out that there was nothing that I liked enough to steal and nothing that I hated enough to vandalize.
Dumb luck, I suppose.
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