At the Art Museum, part 2

"Wild Things" after two Ute petroglyphs in Shavano Valley
Acrylic washes on watercolor paper
by Phillip Hoyle
I appreciate this weasel? and wild paw print and that the
Native artist who chipped it into the boulder approached
the images creatively. A seven-toed whatever it is? I know
from an old Cherokee petroglyph that the story may be about
some now unknown mythological creature. Who knows?

After I moved to Missouri in 1981, I visited the Nelson-Atkins Galleries and the St. Louis Art Museum. Sometimes I went just to experience the places. On other trips to the museums I was researching visual images to use in various curriculum resources. I was especially interested in the artwork of primal cultures to modify into art projects for children, but I saw much more.

Later, in the 1980s, I visited a friend in Los Angeles and got to see The Huntington (with its art collection and botanic gardens), LA County Museum of Art (where I was mightily impressed with the ancient collection, especially a gateway from Persia or Babylonia), and the Norton Simon Museum (where I first experienced a positive emotional response to Hindu sculpture). The experience at the Norton Simon surprised me. I had seen plenty of such sculpture at the Nelson-Atkins Galleries but finally realized that the lighting at this new museum had made possible a deep affective response from me. I found myself ready to join Shiva in a dance of affirmation or destruction—which one I wasn’t sure. Perhaps I was learning more about art due to my visits. Certainly I was learning more about myself.

When in 1990 I moved to New Mexico, I discovered a new world of art. There I visited the Albuquerque Art Museum near where I lived. I also made many trips to the New Mexico Museum of Art and while there also saw many, many galleries. There were more museums of folk art, American Indian art, on and on. In fact, the whole state seemed to me like an art and history museum! Favorite galleries kept me abreast contemporary and traditional Native American art. A friendship with a gallery curator introduced me into a world I had never imagined. I grew in my understanding and got really hooked!

Since those days I have always been ready to make another trip to the museum, any museum, but especially the art museum.

Denver, 2014