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Home Town

We have a museum of fine arts in our town with a pretty decent collection considering the relative obscurity of the location. J and I have spent many wonderful hours browsing through this museum and having lunch in their cafeteria. It used to be one of our favorite things to do on Sunday afternoons after she got off from her job nearby. We also had the opportunity to visit some world-class museums home and abroad. The most time we had for these collections was a day or two. The marquee items are always mobbed by hundreds of tourists trying to take selfies and we stayed away from these hot-spots to go see things less well-known but dazzling all the same. 

Even when spreading the experience across two days it was a sensory overload. J loves museums and she valued any and all time we spent there. When I compare the home town experience of knowing every exhibit and the stories behind them in a tiny museum that is orders of magnitude less impressive than a Prado, in some sense the home town wins. Being able to form that strong connection with a piece of art over time is a very different feeling. It's like the difference between the comfort of sleeping in your own bed and spending a light in a very nice hotel. I wish virtual reality tours of museums around the world would become a more immersive, high fidelity option giving everyone a chance to have that strong connection to a piece that resonated with them - seeing it many times over the years, experiencing how your own mood and stage of life impacts how you see what you see. 

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