UP THE ARSE AT THE MUSEUM

My friend's birthday was this past week. We're at the age when we beg people not to give us anything. It's time to thin out our possessions partially because we're on the shadowy side of the Great Mountain of Life, and partially because we're damn tired of dusting knickknacks. 

So, I get this great idea to take her to a museum at a local college. Not only is it culturally enticing, but it's free. In theory, it's a brilliant plan.

Indeed, when we arrive, we are thrilled to discover that the museum actually has some decent stuff in it, including paintings by Monet and Sargent and deVries, and sculpture by Rodin. It's decently impressive as far as collections go.

But, as our visit progresses, we are accosted by a very large male security guard. There are other people in the museum, and, goddamnit, I am actually behaving myself (which, for me, is a huge imposition and an unmistakable challenge) for a change. This guy is practically up our asses as we attempt to tour the artwork.

Eventually, we make our way to the next floor and are immediately accosted by a mature, matronly security guard who also follows us all over the exhibit. It's creepy and insulting, and she yells at my friend for "touching the glass." She was not touching the glass, and the very next display is interactive and requires touching, anyway, so what the hell is she bitching about?

Let me point out that we are most certainly not the only people in the museum. However, we are clearly not students nor professors of this particular high-brow, uber-liberal college mainly due to our ages but also due to the fact that we are wearing clothes from JC Penney and TJ Maxx rather than Newbury Street and the Shops at Chestnut Hill. Also, our hair color is natural and not somewhere in the land of Roy G Biv. Not that there's anything wrong with that; it just contrasts how badly we stand out.

We may not look like Wendy's mascots, but we hardly look like flaming criminals, either.

By the time we get to the special exhibition on the bottom floor, which students on the Quad raved about, we are thoroughly disgusted with security guards poking at us with their two-way radio antennae. Anticipating artistic greatness (after all of those random kudos), we are instead met with really horrible and unfocused photographs of the same masked people over and over again. The "artist" probably shot the pictures for this display in about thirty minutes. We turn a corner to find a few torn newspaper words glued onto white copy paper. Apparently, it took the artist five months to create these "poems" (my middle school students could have done a better job in forty-five minutes). 

This final special museum presentation is a symbolic representation of the intelligence and taste of the people we have encountered on campus: slow-witted and pompous to the point of absurdity. At $65,000 per year (excluding meals and housing), we can only hope that the smart ones were busy in classes.