oh, it is love

[[Sorry if this post seems scatter-brained and not following one direct line of thought. It's because I am and it doesn't.]]

I spent another lovely (most overused word in this blog? perhaps) day in Brooklyn. I went to the Brooklyn Museum of Art after brunch with Kelly. I think because a) I didn't really know what to expect from the museum & b) it was the first time in a while I paid a ticket to visit a museum, it was pure bliss. Pure bliss, I tell ya. 

I think the biggest "Oh my gosh moment" came when I realized that the museum housed Judy Chicago's "Dinner Party." I've studied this work in practically every art history class since high school. It's a key work in feminist art, as she creates a figurative dinner party seating mythical women as well as many of history's notable women. It's a room-size triangular table, with 39 place settings on each of the three sides. The tiles underneath the table have 999 signatures of other great women from history. Or should I say, "herstory." Chicago went so far in making her point about feminism that she refers to the heritage of women from the past as "her"story rather than "his"tory. It's a huge work of art (literally and figuratively) and I'm so glad after years of discussing it in classrooms I finally saw it in person.

An example of a place setting: a frilly little thing for Ms. Emily Dickinson.

Next, there was a wonderful exhibit of Gustave Caillebotte, now a new favorite Impressionist artist. 

There were too many unexpected jewels I found, too, but I just absolutely loved the museum as a whole. It had so much variety, for one thing. Its exhibits ranged from modern, to Islamic, from jewelry to sculpture and architecture.

[[Here's where the train of thought goes off on it's own.]]

I feel like God's hand was tapping me on the shoulder and saying, "See how you're happy right now and full of thoughts and a million questions about people and life? THIS is what I have planned for you. THIS is what I know you need in your life, in your future. So stop being so worried about what it is you want to do. Because I know your heart and where your gifts can be used." 

At least that's what I hope he was telling me. Because when I'm surrounded by art, or reading about art, or studying it, or writing about it, I just think about the world more deeply, more creatively, in a hard-to-describe kind of way that gives me an excitement and peace like no other thing. I think so much can be learned from a work of art--I fall back on this quote time and again but I find it to say so much of what I think: "Through art alone are we able to emerge from ourselves, to know what another person sees of a universe which is not the same as our own."-Marcel Proust

Until next time, Brooklyn. You never disappoint me.