A PLACE TO STOP, THINK AND WONDER, PART IV

Still Life with Apples on a Sideboard, 1900-06, Cezanne

After all these months of pandemic fears, even the idea of standing before the great works of art in a museum has been like a Star Wars "galaxy far far away." But we're on our third sojourn in Princeton, New Jersey where my husband is a visiting scholar. And the museums here about have vaccination and mask mandates.  I won't harm or be harmed; it's wonderful!

 

I barely know where to start.  But start we have.  The first week we ferried into New York from Atlantic Highlands, NJ.  That's the place I go to scavenge sea glass from the flotsam of the city ("Hobbies are Wonderful," May 16, 2018; "Candles and Your Best Bone China," Feb 9, 2017). What a thrill to approach New York from the water.  I know, this is ordinary for many, but not for me. 

 

Showing our vaccine cards, masked and elated, we entered the worlds of modern and contemporary art. The MoMa (Museum of Modern Art) had an exhibit on Cezanne sketches.  I could live in those rooms.  We saw one sketch I had bought a copy of long ago from my college bookstore.  Over many moves, this little print survived from our first graduate apartment to our present house-but-one.  I wish I could find another reproduction.  We had never seen the original before.  How is it that seeing this piece became such a special moment?  It makes me believe in art as solace, as transcendent, as in some ways more alive than life.  

 

Olympia, 1875, Paul Cezanne

 

The next week we drove just an hour from where we're staying to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, you know, the one with the "Rocky Steps."   We spent the day in French drawing rooms and cafes with Renoir, dance studios with Degas, lovely papered boudoirs with Matisse and Bonnard, at sideboards with Cezanne.  What a wonderful visit!  I could linger and feed my soul forever. 

 

Girl Tatting, 1906, Renoir

 

After the Shower, 1914, Bonnard

This is not an everyday occurrence for me; rather a thirst intermittently quenched.  These days feed my soul, my heart, my mind.  The broad open curated rooms of a museum filled with the works of artists who have labored to record their vision, for me are as profound a place as the canopies of nature.  I wish I could express my gratitude in terms worthy of the gift. But I cannot.  With appreciation, Nina Naomi