I write about my search for solace in art and nature, lessons learned often in the most unexpected ways.
I serve and facilitate by applying lessons learned to issues we face, as we navigate the present and future of museums for visitors and for those of us who work within these cherished places.
The book all curators wish they had written, or still could: Claire Wilcox’s Patchwork: A Life Amongst Clothes (2020) stirs her own memories when looking at and conserving clothes and textiles at the Victoria & Albert Museum. The book reviews cleverly describe her process as unravelling, spinning, weaving, unfolding, tugging, and measuring. Her chapter titles are as inviting as her lucious prose: catch, entwined, love, gather, seam, loss. Her visit to the storeroom of mannequins is sheer mystery and delight “Sometimes people ask if we are tempted to try things on, and we shake our heads, we wouldn’t dream of it. But I did, once, dream of it.”
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The Ecstasy of St. Francis, Frick Collection
Thank goodness this book called to me on my shelf for a reread. Elkin’s quote from playwright Georg Buchner sums up the problem worth solving: “We will have to start measuring out our spirits in liqueur glasses,” tiny drams of emotion and feeling. Close looking, deep feeling, tears and joy (or tears of joy), cringes of anger and fear, pint glasses for our spirits when we gaze at pictures or sculptures or chapels or architecture that lifts us up so high we have to cry. Kudos to you, James, for rehabilitating tears as exhilarating and healing.
Eagleman is a professor at Stanford University studying neuroplasticity, how our brains continue to be receptive throughout life, as the malleability of our youthful sponge brains take on experiences from the world around us. His new book, Livewired isn’t about art or nature, but may as well be as he encourages us all to take on new novel challenges, learn new things, challenge ourselves to think, look, and experience.
If we’re honest, we’ll all admit that we are exhausted. We have forgotten how to rest. Katherine May offers her entirely relevant story, that it took illness that hit her family one, two, three (husband, son, herself) to winter, to take “time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order.” And doing (I love this) “deeply unfashionable things--slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting.” Rest as a radical act, that may mean hibernation but also can take the form of time with family, taking a long walk in the middle of the day (so indulgent, right?). Or my favorite rest: looking at a work of art for a very long time, not a glance but rather an immersion. Listen to Katherine’s On Being interview, her voice is lovely, comforting, and rested.
The man who roomed with Julius Erving in college, an athlete with a degree in psychology, who did “that Zen Buddhist stuff” with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, is disciplined, amusing, and I re-read his book every time I need to get back into The Zone. Mumford quotes Yogi Berra and Thich Nhat Hanh, Bruce Lee and the Buddha. He reminds us of our five superpowers: mindfulness, concentration, insight, right effort, and trust required to do anything and everything, from sport to work to life. “The mind is a muscle… it’s that simple and that profound.”
Ever think of someone and they call you that same day? Synchronicity or serendipity? Have you read old-school power of positive thinking texts or competed in amateur athletics with a coach who stressed the importance of visualization? Or listened to Amy Cuddy’s famous Ted talk “Fake it till you become it,” also about setting a vision and keeping it in mind against most odds. The new trend is called “manifesting,” the realization that our thoughts and experiences are linked, but that “such a modish, and mercantile, spin on wishful thinking” can also smack of selfishness and privilege. Be careful what you wish.