The eldest daughter (10) was allowed to participate in an art course. The invitation came by letter and as provincials we thought it was a unique opportunity that we should not deprive her of. Perhaps there was a Rembrandt in her, it’s a pity that my parents were not allowed to experience this, in their eyes a museum was something unattainable, something boring too, because except in castles whose history my father described as ‘at least tangible’, they never stayed there for more than half an hour at a time. My mother after a short visit to the Gemeentemuseum in Arnhem: “I have a headache from the colors in those paintings.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if they thought that artists also made their art in museums, bakers also baked their bread behind the shop.
With that background, we reported to Museum H’Art on Wednesday afternoon, a museum that used to be called ‘Hermitage’, but that had to find a new purpose due to the war between Russia and Ukraine. At the time of the art course it was ‘Brancusi, the Birth of Modern Sculpture’. We, I and the two youngest daughters (8 and 4), heard about it in the museum café, where they rained beads and I wrote this column. I found the hours difficult, especially because making noise is not appreciated and that fact seemed to ensure that extra noise was produced from our group. What didn’t help was a waiter who dropped to his knees, put his finger on his mouth and said ‘sssst’ very loudly. Every time he came on screen in the following weeks, Frida van Roosmalen (4) would put a finger to her mouth and imitate him, he would look at us like a pig that had just had its tail cut off. After the first two times, I no longer had to imagine walking around the museum itself.
“We know that now,” they said menacingly at the entrance. They didn’t like Brancusi’s sculptures.
“You’re still too young for this,” I said yesterday from behind a glass of apple juice.
“You’re too young for it yourself,” said the eight-year-old.
A table further away, a man said without being asked that of course I didn’t understand anything about it, he knew my head and clearly didn’t think much of me. Yesterday a bicycle key was pushed into a grille, a box of beads fell to the floor and the youngest ran through the building screaming at the top of his lungs.
After the last course, one of the waiting mothers said that the effects of art education would only become visible later in life. “In the normality of experiencing.” I’m still chewing on that sentence, I think it’s true.
Marcel van Roosmalen writes a column on Mondays and Thursdays.
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