15. Free Museums
It's a midwestern thing, I heard on NPR a couple days ago. Free art museums. Wouldn't it be wonderful, the man being interviewed was saying, to go to an art museum for just an hour or so. Go, see something, and leave to contemplate it.
But of course.
St. Louis has a free art museum--a good one. It's not as big as some, but St. Louis isn't as big as some. We have all the standards--a Water Lilies, medieval art, more Max Beckmann than we deserve, ancient stuff from China and Meso-America. Art museum stuff. And I can walk in with a baby in a stroller, take my 7 year old to look at the mummy in the basement, and then walk out without feeling like I have to get my money's worth. I already have.
The parking is free, too--as it is that the free History Museum in the same park. The zoo is free, although you either pay to park or hunt down a spot on the street. We can (and do) go to the zoo and only see a third of it. Then we go have lunch and aren't so totally exhausted that everyone breaks down and cries on the way home. The Science Center is free, although we don't go there as often. Probably only two or three times since Sophia came along. Mike used to work there; once you know the inner workings of a thing (law, sausage, the Science Center) it isn't as enjoyable.
I love free cultural institutions. It makes me not begrudge the fee for the zoo train. Or getting something for my toddler to eat while we're there. It means that we go to these places, instead of just talking about going to these places.
But the other thing it does, the negative thing it does, is it makes my teeth fall out of my mouth when we go to Chicago or Houston or San Francisco or wherever we're visiting. And it's not free. What do you mean it's $7 to park and $10 for children under 8? What the hell is that all about? Do we really need to go there? Isn't there a park with a playground instead? But we go, at least to some of the places--I don't go to zoos elsewhere, but I will visit other art museums. Children's museums make me insane, but I like the one in Houston well enough. And I like specific museums, like ones dedicated to baseball or dogs or steamships.
There's something to be said for my tax money supporting cultural institutions, so that the art museum can live up to its tag line: dedicated to art and free to all.
4 comments:
totally agree. we sometimes just dash into the zoo or the art museum when we're on a bike ride to refill water bottles, check on the (not-so) baby tigers, visit the De Chirico on the third floor, use the cleaner (than the park) toilets. it's one of the reasons we moved here in the first place, and one of the reasons we've stayed.
In Chicago you can check day passes to the museums out from the public library. You have to know someone who lives there with a library card to check them out, but it can be free if you know where to look.
Don't tell anyone, but I once licked their Picasso. That's how empty SLAM can be sometimes -- you get a giant Picasso all to yourself.
hear hear: amazingly enough, one of Frannie's night shirts is a huge SLAM t-shirt that her grandfolks got there and were chucking out.......enough Max Beckmann is as good as a feast I always say
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