Museum Hours Page #2

could both be free."

We got to wondering how museums began.

He looked it up and was pleasantly surprised to report

that because of the French Revolution the Louvre opened

as what is considered to be the one of

the first truly public art museums

with the idea that art should be

accessible to the people,

not just tied up in the private rooms of the rich.

He was a good kid, and I'm sorry he moved on.

I watch the adolescents come through

with the big school groups.

They fool around, ignore their teachers,

send text messages.

Sometimes they compete to be the most bored

and to make fun of the art.

It gets a bit tedious but I know I'd have done the same.

Some of the paintings do get their attention,

Medusa's head of snakes works like a charm,

or rather like some horror film.

In fact we have a strong showing of severed heads here,

the Cranach Judith and Holofernes is especially graphic,

but there are at least five more.

And then of course, once they

actually start looking, there's sex

which is common in the museum, too.

It makes the kids laugh, nervously I guess.

And to be completely honest,

there are a few paintings

that look like cheap porn even to me,

soft-core of course,

but somehow just a bit sleazy.

There's one with a dog at the bottom of the picture

and even the dog looks a bit embarrassed.

But then there's the sculpture with a veiled body

that gets to almost everyone, young or old.

Or that magnificent body,

of a god I think, his penis is missing

as they often are,

but I think that just makes everyone

think about it and miss it.

It's quite a thing,

to be able to watch people's impressions.

And it's as if we, the guards, can be invisible.

I see the one kid on their own, maybe

holding back at the tail of the class.

Perhaps it's a girl, or a boy,

looking furtively at the discus-thrower,

whose ass so tenderly rests on a tree,

and the tree seeming very dead in comparison.

I've seen this happen again and again.

Where else can one look at such a thing,

and without shame,

because after all, one is in a very fine art museum?

Of course, these days they could just go online

and see all the Internet porn they want,

but it's different here, the way it feels for them.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but I know it is.

And on Sundays, for example, there's an

immigrant's party here that we love...

It's a big spectacle to admire

on the huge church grounds.

This big gathering of black birds.

And I like to walk up to the church,

because the church is really unbelievable,

and you go to the back, and walk over the hill

to the Johann-Staud-Gasse,

and it's always a unique view.

The most-asked question is probably

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