
A bit over a week ago, I found myself in the same weird room of contemporary art in The Modern Wing. In this little gallery room is this Lisa Yuskavage painting, Angel; Margharita Manzelli’s Dopo la Fine; Peter Doig’s Gasthof zur Muldentalsperre; and finally the Lucian Freud Sunny Morning–Eight Legs. And since it is such a weird and wonderful room, it is ideal for eavesdropping. I did not spend over an hour in this room to eavesdrop, but was in there reviewing the Manzelli painting. The eavesdropping realization was just icing.
I have always been very fond of eavesdropping in museums. I spent endless hours in many museums doing just this while I sucked in the art around me. But this day, with my intent being very great on my review for my class of the Manzelli painting, pondering reviewing the Yuskavage painting pictured above, it was a wondrous eavesdropping day.
Yuskavage’s painting I have pictured here is titled, Angel. This is very tame for Yuskavage whose use of porno pastels further creeps out her luscious canvases of nude female figures in various narratives of dire straits of physical deformities. Abnormally large breasts and bulbous bellies that seem inhuman, so this one … tame in comparison.
Picture this: In comes a couple in their 60s perhaps, they walk into this odd room where the eye first spies Manzelli and Yuskavage. They stand before Angel in complete silence for almost 5 straight, uninterrupted minutes and then she says: “That’s no angel!” She seemed angry, irritated, quickly leaving it for the Manzelli, while her male companion, maybe her husband, continued to stare at Angel as if she were the most gorgeous and real woman he had ever seen. He was very taken by this woman on the wall in porno pastels, and I am thinking perhaps this is what upset the woman, most likely his wife (they acted married, long married).
Later I caught them near Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #88, and this same woman was empathizing with the visibly melancholic woman on the wall while this same man gazed into Mike Kelley’s wonderful downpour waterfall of stuffed animals, Eviscerated Corpse. It was a fascinating afternoon in the museum with a very fascinating couple.
Now, I am interning in the Art Institute with Express Talk tours and look forward to this journey with my museum guests … their words, their faces, so significant. If the Curators of museums don’t already do this, I think they should spend loads of time eavesdropping on their museum’s guests. I can’t wait to open my ears to any and all of the observations of everyone in that space there for a common reason — to see art, even if their agendas are different.
Eavesdropping in a museum … I recommend it highly.












