the MAC

A photo at Death's Door: 

Jk mom, I am fine. Do not worry. 

My family may not be normal, and we may not see each other all the time, but there was a time when we did everything together. When my dad's job took him on trips around the states, we would all tag along; my mom, Kevin and I. We would stay in nice hotels with indoor pools, eat McDonald's in the car. But the fondest memories I have are going to the museums. My father took us to all kinds of museums: the field museum in Chicago to see the dinosaurs, art museums with Warhol's Campbell Chicken noodle soup. As I looked around for security guards, I would get close enough to touch the mummies and hieroglyphs, my favorite part of any museum.

It may sound lame, but if I have kids, I want to take them to museums, and have them be art obsessed? And cool. My aunt Jill said we were cool kids, because my brother and I could talk about Frida Kahlo and we could barely even tie our shoes. And although I had taken advantage of going to all those famous museums in the States, here I had only taken advantage of watching dramatic telenovelas and napping until dinner

Santiago is full of museums, exhibits, and culture weeeee

So Friday, Diego and I decided to go to Quinta Normal, where there is a whole park with museums on every corner. After a heated discussion on cultural differences, we made our way to the Natural History Museum. I don't have that much to tell, mainly, because I didn't really take the time to read all the descriptions in Spanish... But basically, it started with a bang (the big bang) and ended with whales, which I know is probably not the best description of natural history, but Diego thought the whales were AMAZING.

It was a nice start to our day, but it was a small museum, and we finished quickly. It was time to go to see what I really wanted to see.

The Museum of Contemporary Art. 

After walking in the opposite direction for ten minutes we finally found the museum. But this was no ordinary visit to a museum. I mean, I was finally getting a day to do one of my favorite things with my boyfriend so obviously we were going to act like kids. We raced up and down the main stairs (he won). There was an exhibit, forgot the artist, that displayed videos in different rooms with the black curtains closed, and a white ball traveling to all ends of the world. We shuffled into the different rooms, alone, and kissed under the stars, in the desert, on a mountain. All while a white ball rolled on by, shifting from the different projector screens.  

Sometimes contemporary art is weird:

Weird like when there is a room full of ceramic eggs that all have the word egg painted on them. And photos of death drawn in every form surrounding them. Diego stepped out and I was alone. Alone to look at the photos, to stare at the eggs. I took a picture, as Diego walked back in, reminding me that no photography was allowed. The eggs stayed on their podiums as we began k i s s i n g. In the other room, there was a man on a projector snoring, so I figured it be best to skip the snogging as we moved along. 

We reached my new favorite exhibit; which was by an artist who had papered the walls with his drawings. His drawings reminded me off what my brother draws, when he doodles in his sketchpad. I wished he was there with me, because he gets this stuff more than I do. He is the creative one, the one who read the art books and helped me get through spending a whole day running around an art museum. 

Frida Kahlo and Pablo Picasso 

My brother wasn't there to explain why any of it mattered, why there was an ostrich without a head in the doorway. I still don't understand the eggs, much less the white traveling ball, but I like that I don't have to try understand them. For about an hour, I didn't have to think, I could just watch, taking in the beauty, the strangeness. I could run around different rooms and see something that I had never seen before. I felt like a kid again, discovering something new around every corner, innocent to what was really behind the big picture. 
After all this, I ate a sopaipilla. 
I can now officially say that the only thing I like more than napping is making out in front of art, being young and in love. EL FIN.