On museums

The thing about Glasgow is that it has nine -- nine -- free museums. On a Sunday afternoon or a Tuesday morning, people spill in and out of tall doors to examine paintings, stone arrowheads and wall fragments, faded gowns from the nineteenth century, sculpture, books with indecipherable handwriting opened to the middle of their spines, taxidermies from around the globe, and artifacts both from colonized jungles and from Glaswegian houses down the street. 

Museums are a beloved pastime of mine, a superb shelter from rain and wind and indeterminate precipitation of all seasons. In my opinion, the people in the museums are as much an object of fascination as the objects numbered and held behind glass. The small families, scattering themselves sometimes across the wide galleries as they seek something of interest; the chattering tour groups on a determined yet careless scavenger hunt that they will likely repeat in a similar location tomorrow; the elderly couples who walk slowly through the portrait galleries. And me (and a few other lone spectators, perhaps), sometimes munching shortbread or digestive biscuits stored in a nearby pocket, always sipping from an insulated mug, occasionally pulling out a phone or small notebook to write down a word, phrase or a name. 

The Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery looms as a glowing red castle in the midst of the vibrant green park. The People's Palace, meant to be visited by the working classes when it opened in the early twentieth century, is situated in Glasgow Green in the Eastern end of the city, but is similarly dusky sandstone. Between the two lie the Gallery of Modern Art, St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art, and others. Down by the river is the Riverside Museum with its tall ship moored on the banks of the Clyde, and in the University campus is the Hunterian Museum, boasting animal specimens and desiccated Roman shoes molded onto tiny wooden feet. 

These museums are walking destinations, a welcome respite from the concrete streets and neon signs of the bustling city. They're funny things, museums, as they soar in front of you and invite you to take time from the present and the future to step into a space dedicated to the things that have come before us and to the ideas and ages of our lifetimes and those we can't remember or can barely imagine. The glass cases are static, yet covered with thumb and nose-prints and graced by placards and labels that change with the times. Behind closed doors and under us in vaults lie so many other things that are relegated to the darkness, their value recognized but locked away. 

As we examine our own possessions, and glorify both minimalism and consumption (sometimes in the same breath), museums are a handy reminder of the power of things to both enrich and overwhelm our lives. It is from these things that I form ideas and experiences, but also, like so many others, try to escape them. 

My afternoons in museums leave me with questions: how do we decide what gets put behind glass, and what we cast away? And what of mine would I choose to display?