Amy Lu's View

This weekend I got my Walker Art Museum membership card, so I feel officially qualified to celebrate and blog about Museum Advocacy Days (although I feel like I will be appreciating more than advocating, but close enough for my blogging purposes). 

I didn’t go to a museum today, but I have plenty of photos (not all of them selfies) of various museum outings to look back on. 

I love museums. I love museums of all types–art, history, science, culture, general weirdness. I always try to get to as many museums as I can when I travel. Two especially memorable museums I’ve been to are the Museum of Sex (New York) and the now extinct National Coin-Op and Video Game Museum  in St. Louis (we went there on our honeymoon). 

I also try to take as much advantage of our local museums as I can. Repeatedly visiting the same museum can be comforting, and I even feel like I’m visiting old friends when I see the same piece of art or artifact multiple times. Although I didn’t go to a museum today, I am going to go on the record and say that I do have a goal of visiting the Weisman Art Museum and Bell Museum sometime in the near future–two local museums that I have never been to. 

I’m not a super serious or disciplined museum goer–I tend to let things wash over me. I read label copy, but not meticulously, and I certainly hit a limit for how much I can process. And I’ll admit that when it comes to art museums, I’m mostly a celebrity chaser. I gravitate towards works by artists I’ve heard of. I’m also not a fan of tours–with a real guide or audio. I just like to wander around and do things at my own pace. 

I’m happy I became a member of the Walker, but it’s often too “out there” for me. I frequently get  confused and bemused because I don’t know what’s going on with the art. I’m not above the cliched questioning of “Is this art?” and “I could do that, but I guess it’s when you’re the person who thinks of doing it first.”

I don’t know how much knowledge I’ve taken in or retained from all the museums that I’ve been to, but I do hope that some of the things I’ve experienced and learned have seeped into me and are still there, even if I don’t remember or am not aware of what I’ve learned. 

I even considered getting my Master’s degree in something that could lead to a career in museums, and took some type of museum studies class before I started Library School. I don’t remember how or why I switched from the museum world to the library world, but maybe someday I can combine my fantasy of owning a bar with owning a museum. Many museums also have restaurants and bars*, so I think I could easily put a little museum in my bar. 

I’m certainly at the age now that many of my personal artifacts have historical relevance (if not artistic merit) and could be considered museum pieces. 

*There’s no smooth way to incorporate this little anecdote in, so I’ll resort to using a footnote to say my friend Stephanie and I sat next to the actress Lili Taylor at the Walker’s bar last week! We played it cool and didn’t bother her, so there’s no photographic evidence. But I still have the song that she sings in “Say Anything” (“Joe Lies”) stuck in my head.