10 More Minutes at the Museum
I return with a slightly more serious attempt at the 10-minute deep dive challenge, along with an example for you to try.
“This may start to make you uncomfortable—even deeply so. If you can’t handle it anymore, this button [I quit] will end the experience.”
So reads the two-part warning on the first 10-minute deep dive challenge as laid out by Francesca Paris and Larry Buchanan of the New York Times. The text hovers near the bottom of the screen (or, the frame of the painting as it were), where you are asked to look at James MacNeill Whistler’s Nocturne in Blue and Silver and are given a series of prompts to help get you started. Despite the Lumonesque overtones of the task, you aren’t shamed or punished for taking the easy way out (though no waffle party for you!), but the fact that only a split second separates the departure of the first part of the warning and the arrival of the second gives insight as to how little confidence Paris and Buchanan may have in your ability to succeed. (For the record, only about 25% stick out the whole 10 minutes, though I suspect it’s mainly due to people just leaving the window open while they hop over to YouTube. My results remain hidden for, uhm, security reasons.)
In my previous post on this topic, I describe my utter futility in my initial attempt—though I may have embellished a bit on my struggle to follow museum etiquette of maintaining a safe distance from the displays (full disclosure, it wasn’t the one I described in the post)—but I certainly didn’t exaggerate the difficulty it took to find my footing (sorry, I couldn’t resist).
In reality, I spent about 1 hour each Thursday in August at the venerable Cincinnati Art Museum prior to the free jazz concerts hosted by It’s Commonly Jazz at the adjoining Seasongood Pavillion. As I have only recently retired, I welcomed the chance to incorporate a little structure into my inchoate schedule, if only for one day a week. I used to bring student groups (both my high-school Spanish students and Governor’s Scholars**, and later my adult English Language Learners) on tours here, but that was nearly a lifetime ago when program travel budgets were ample and cross-disciplinary education was all the rage. Now I could indulge in the Museum’s outstanding collection at my own pace without regard to educating anyone other than myself.
But every time I go to a museum on my own, I fall into the same time trap: I make a beeline to the first gallery—usually the closest one to the entrance— and spend the first 30 minutes or so really trying to absorb every work, ambitiously reading every placard no matter how dry and scrutinizing every brushstroke and paint dollop in hushed awe, only to lose focus within 20 minutes as I begin to think about lunch and observe that water fountains and bathrooms are suddenly in dire need yet nowhere to be found. After an hour I find myself standing in line at the museum cafe behind a school tour group of snot-nosed kids loudly complaining that there is nothing to eat here and a harried chaperone trying to keep all of the food allergies straight.
Thus I was delighted at attempting the 10-minute deep dive, which in turn had been adapted from the 3-hour class assignment given by an art professor (which even in my retired state is about 2 hours more than I want to give to any endeavor). Rather than looking like a character in Bill Keane’s cartoon Family Circus, I was now able to wrangle a more coherent approach and reduce a seemingly impossible task into a more manageable one.
“Sure, Jon,” you may be thinking, “that’s all well and good for you. You’re retired now and time is plentiful. But I’m super busy and I don’t really see the benefit of this fairly insular activity. With all of the terrible things happening around the world right now, surely I could better direct my mental energies elsewhere!”
This is true, I agree. You could spend your time in any number of ways, including devising complex strategies to solve the various local, national and global crises we are facing. But are you doing that now? Or are you considering closing this window, adding more items to your cart for Prime Day and checking TikTok for a new skin-care regimen for your Labubu while asking Chat GPT if it has any opinions on Dubai chocolate? (By the way, if you made it this far, you’ve almost spent 10 minutes!)
The most precious resource we have right now is our time and how we choose to spend it is crucial. As many an armchair pundit has articulated lately, we live in an attention economy, constantly flitting from one digital distraction to another as we are desperate to avoid even the onset of boredom while convincing ourselves that living vicariously through the flickering images on our screens is preferable to the depressing predictability of our real lives. I’ll let Paris and Buchanan explain their rationale:
“The act of focusing is both possible and valuable, researchers say, no matter how intimidating or pointless it might seem. That’s particularly important in a world where typical office workers spend an average of less than a minute at a time on any one screen…At first, you may have felt that it was too dull to hold your interest for even 10 seconds, much less 10 minutes. But with more focus, and a fair amount of resolve, you probably slowed down. Maybe, small discoveries, little pieces of information, ideas or even new sensations or feelings began to emerge. You might even have a lasting memory of the painting. Perhaps you’ll think of it when you see a body of water, or a reflection across a lake…By being a little bored, and a little outside [of your] comfort zone, you can see something new.”
Now before I risk copyright infringement, I would highly recommend checking out the excellent series of exercises Paris and Buchanan have crafted and give them a shot. Personally, I found that going to a museum in person was more effective. I would set my watch timer (not my phone timer, as I would be too tempted to goof off), put in my earbuds and play some Bach (Murray Perahia’s exquisite French Suites, if you’re wondering) on my MP3 player (to help further reduce distractions) to assist with immersing myself in the task and drown out the occasional chatter, and get started.
I could include all of the paintings I chose for my weekly workouts, but I’ll use just one. It is my favorite in the entire museum and connected to my own experience when I was bringing my Spanish students back in the day. If you’re interested in my thoughts and/or approach, click on the drop down arrows above the picture, but try the experiment on your own first. (I’ve even included a 10 minute timer AND the museum notes to help eat up some of the time!)
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Instead of starting with the faces of the subjects, start with the feet. Right away you see Murillo’s intention to inspire the viewer to charitable action when you notice that Saint Thomas is the only one wearing shoes. Murillo guides you through the lower section of the painting by starting with the dirty feet of the urchin on the left, half in shadow as your eye follows along to the well-lit figure in the center.
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Notice how Murillo is able to to convey both Saint Thomas’s higher social status while also depicting him as unassuming and at ease with the others. He is roughly on the same physical plane and sight lines with two of the boys, and the arrangement of the clothes that he is donating helps to unify all of the subjects.
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As your eye moves up through the canvas, notice how the background is very simple and free of compositional distractions, yet Murillo’s subtle shading of light helps to reinforce St. Thomas as the main subject of the painting. Murillo is careful to indicate to his audience that this is clearly Seville, yet we could easily imagine this taking place in any city or town.
(Image taken by me from the Cincinnati Art Museum.)
** The Governor’s Scholars Program is a summer residential program in Kentucky for rising seniors that has been in existence since 1983. I myself was a scholar in 1989, and I taught in the program for 5 years in the late 90s and early 2000s. One year I took students to the Museum for a tour in Spanish, and our theme was, “Is this Art?” One of the students astutely observed that since we were in an art museum that of course it was art, until I showed him an exhibit at that the time which included a neon sign with the phrase, “This is Art” hanging on a blank wall. The student stared for a moment, and then turned to me and in Spanish succinctly stated, “No. Esto no es nada.” (No. This is nothing.)