IN New York

The thing I like about museums is that you really don’t have to do much. You just have to look. Our four other senses (for the most part) can take a break, and we can simply do our eyes do the work, letting them guide us often from room to room, from gallery to gallery, from masterpiece to masterpiece or from hallway to something mind-blowing, life-changing, knocks-your-breath-out: whether it is a world-famous 20^th-century painting or a thin gold bracelet from a nearly-forgotten civilization from a distant speck of human history.  Museums house treasure, images, artifacts, sculptures; and we merely look at them. Their power or significance or beauty (or lack thereof) can be absorbed right then, or it can come much later. That part doesn’t really matter, though. Looking is all we do, and that is the important part.

Museums also offer us the chance to shush.  In a city where the scream of traffic is always present or the shriek of chatter is surrounding, museums can act as shelters safe from the manic elements.  Here, we no longer must respond, react, think, act, do, prepare, prevent…we just get to look.

Whether as magnificent and holy as a Roman cathedral, or a dusty corner of a non-descript office building, New York City contains a museum for just about any and every field of interest: a millennia-old silver Islamic coin is one of 175,000 on view at the American Numismatic Society, a destination for anyone interested in coins, the history of money and economy or design. The Lower East Side Tenement Museum reenacts the turn-of-the-century life for thousands of immigrants, providing visitors with an insight so virtual that the current world temporarily does not exist.  The museums of this city can even provide hardened city dwellers or tired visitors the opportunity to escape the concrete jungle: the Queens County Farm Museum offers green grounds on which to relax, farm animals to feed, and even a hay-ride for those in need of total rustic-inspired recreation.

With all of that said, welcome to my blog, Cultured Pearls! I am by no means a history, art history, social history and natural history buff—I have an art history/museum studies minor, and that’s about as qualified as I get.

I am just someone who enjoys seeing things, learning things, and appreciates the opportunity to, for once, be quiet while I am doing so.  Any and all feedback, expertise, insight or suggestions will be more than welcome on this journey.