At the Museum, part three

Someone was there! Hand and footprint petroglyphs at the
Shavano site have always got my attention.
Acrylic washes on paper by Phillip Hoyle.

For a year and 9 months I lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I enjoyed the Philbrook Museum and the Gilcrease Museum. I made many trips to these two while living in there. I liked seeing the art and studied it with rapt attention for I was at the time also studying with working artists at the Oklahoma Art Workshops. 

Now I live in the shadow of the first art museum I ever visited, the Denver Art Museum. I’ve held a membership there for over fifteen years and make monthly trips to look at some special display or simply to walk the halls of my favorite parts of the collection.

What are those favorites? Did someone ask? I’ll tell anyway.

I always visit the western art display, the two floors of contemporary art, the Native American collection, and some traveling show. Often I visit the rather new and greatly expanded fabric arts displays, the photographic displays, and some part of the Asian collection. I like to go alone or with one other person (at a time). When with others I watch their reactions in order to gain new perspectives related to my favorite pieces. I sometimes walk through the displays in order to enjoy the architecture of the buildings. Occasionally I sit in one of the small libraries to page through books, watch a video, or simply to read my own books. I people watch at times, play with children in special interactive displays, or sit in the gift shop sipping coffee.

My approach to the place is always varied slightly and I have never been disappointed in a visit there. It’s not like being at church, but the experience satisfies something deep within. I do feel a kind of reverence and awe there. And I always like to see new pieces on display whether they are recently added or presented from the huge collection most people have never imagined the museum curates.

I feel like one of the luckiest people in the world when I’m at the museum and come away refreshed, intrigued, full of ideas, inspired to continue in my own art work.

Denver, 2014