The Man Who Hated Museums

The first time I met Mr. Los Angeles, at a party in Los Angeles, he told me that he was planning to go to Europe later that year. He had never been before, he said, having been raised with little money; but now that he had established a successful career for himself, he intended to take himself on a long trip in the fall. He would begin, he said, in Norway, to pay his respect to the land of his ancestors. Then he would travel down to Amsterdam, just because it sounded like a cool city, and then maybe go on to France to eat cheese and, because Mr. Los Angeles is a man of many and specific interests, visit the distillery where Chartreuse was made. He was looking forward to it, he said.

Photo by Alex Simpson on Unsplash

And Mr. Los Angeles did indeed go to Europe later that year. However, he didn’t quite manage to get to either Norway or Amsterdam, neither of which fine places either of us has visited even yet. Instead, he spent the first week of his much-anticipated European adventure sitting in various living rooms in North London being inspected by members of his future in-law family ranging from the mildly batty to the barking mad. Somewhat to my relief, he decided to go through with the wedding nevertheless.

We did get to France, though, and we did manage eat a great deal of cheese, and also to visit the Chartreuse distillery, where we were shown around by attendants wearing chartreuse-colored suits, which I privately thought was brave of them, and after that we decided to drive down to Italy to visit my Uncle Tony in Rome. Under the Alps we drove like a subterranean Hannibal and at last arrived in Florence, after dark and in a rainstorm of Biblical proportions. The next morning, we strolled through the rain-washed city, spent some time investigating the Casa di Dante, and then walked down towards the river and past the Museo del Bargello.

“Do you want to go in?” I asked Mr. Los Angeles.

Mr. Los Angeles looked across the street to the Museo. There was a special exhibition that month, and a line of people stretched from the door and clear around the corner of the block.

“I’m not that interested in museums,” he replied.

Now, I am in many ways a perfectly delightful person, but not even my staunchest champions would claim that my observational powers were acute. Heady with love and Italy, I failed to notice the line of people snaking from the door of the art gallery, and simply heard Mr. Los Angeles telling me that he did not care for museums. This was newly into our relationship, and we were still learning about each other. On that trip, I had already learned that Mr. Los Angeles was undaunted by my family (impressive); that he insisted on doing all the driving (yes, please); that he insisted on having music while he was driving (not my own first choice, but he was the one driving, after all); that he did not care for smoked salmon (there went my fantasies of gourmet romantic breakfasts); and that, while he was not in the regular habit of crashing cars, he was nevertheless capable of doing so (don’t ask). To this file I now added that Mr. Los Angeles was uninterested in museums; and if this registered as a slightly surprising prejudice for a man who so loved history, well, he was also a Norwegian who disliked smoked salmon, so go figure.

Evidence to refute my theory presented itself immediately. Having by-passed the Bargello, we made our way to the Uffizi Gallery and both spent a couple of happy hours there. The next day we drove up the hill to Vinci and the Museo Leonardiano, where after an hour I decided had seen enough so took off to wander around the town, while the museum-averse Mr. Los Angeles remained, absorbed, until lunchtime. After we left Florence, we drove to Orvieto and made a beeline for the Etruscan Museum where a similar situation played out. And so on to Rome, which is itself a museum spread over seven hills, where Mr. Los Angeles was both visibly and audibly in his element. Nevertheless, in the eyes of the woman with whom he proposed to spend the rest of his life, he remained uninterested in museums. He had told me so himself.

Back in Los Angeles, our normal life resumed. At the weekends, Mr. Los Angeles would often suggest we spend an afternoon at LACMA or the Natural History Museum; when we made trips out of town, a visit to the local museum was de rigueur, during which we would continue the agreement at which we had arrived in Vinci, that I would enjoy it until I had had enough and Mr. Los Angeles would stay until he had examined every single exhibit exhaustively and with boundless fascination. But Mr. Los Angeles had declared to me quite specifically, one bright October morning on the Via del Proconsolo, that he was uninterested in museums, and so it must be true.

Looking back now, it seems extraordinary that it never once occurred to me to question Mr. Los Angeles’ supposed museum indifference. But we see what we see and we hear what we hear; and if any one of us has nailed their colors to a particular belief – whether it be a religious faith, a political allegiance, or simply an opinion about a partner’s taste in sightseeing – then all the evidence of our own eyes and ears can come battering at our mind’s front door and it won’t make a darned bit of difference because what we’ve decided to think is what we’ve decided to think. And Mr. Los Angeles is what his mother would describe delicately as an unusual man; and compared with some of the Baroque painted ceilings that adorn his mental processes, the question of why he would continue to spend time in spaces that purportedly bored him was as but a tiny trinket box in the entire Palace of Versailles.

Time passed. Mr. Los Angeles and I graduated from giddy lovers to newlyweds to regular married couple. We fought, we made up, we went to work, we went to dinner, we got sick, we got better. A couple of years after the first European trip, we were invited to a friend’s birthday party in London, and decided to pay a visit there of several days’ duration. I would spend much of that time making myself nauseatingly adorable to the various editors who commissioned work from me; Mr. Los Angeles, having by now served his time with my family, would be free to explore the city.

“What are you going to do with yourself while I’m busy?” I asked him. “It’s a pity you’re not interested in museums because London has some really good ones.”

Mr. Los Angeles looked at me in a way you just might call kinda funny.

“What are you talking about?” he said.

“You don’t like museums,” I reminded him. “You told me so yourself, in Florence.”

Mr. Los Angeles shook his head as if to dislodge something that had landed unexpectedly in his brain.

“Where have you been,” he asked in honest befuddlement, “for all the time we’ve known each other?”

I wish Mr. Los Angeles would go to our nation’s capital and start asking similar questions of certain people there.