I Can’t Wait to Be a Rich Old Man With My Trophy Wife at an Art Museum

by luther barbarrossa

What is art? I honestly have no clue. There was a point when my opening message to all my Tinder matches was “What is art?,” because I thought it made me seem smart and different. But then I stopped because it didn’t help spark good conversations or get me laid.

Every time I walk through an art museum or gallery, I wonder about the industry politics that make a piece good and worthy of hanging. I assume it’s all an echo chamber where at some point, some critic loved an expo, and then others started collecting it, and now we celebrate Monet’s water lilies even though they are really muted and boring and make me feel absolutely nothing.

But not all art sucks. Some of it is good and makes me feel things or teaches me things about the political and cultural history of the people who made it. That’s why I go to museums. I also go to museums because doing so often makes me feel cultured and not like the lazy, stoned dirtbag I truly am at heart. 

In reality, I probably would be content to spend every free moment of every day lying in bed, smoking weed, rewatching old Simpsons episodes, and ordering in seamless. I do that often. It’s great. However, I sometimes have to have conversations with people. And when I talk to people, I want them to like me and find me engaging. Since I am not a celebrity or insanely attractive, I have to say interesting things to be engaging. Museums are great places to learn interesting things that make others think you are worth talking to.

I used to think getting stoned for museums was nice. In reality, that’s just the fact that I think getting stoned for anything is nice. Weed is tight. But weed makes museums worse. After 20 minutes, you’re just tired and thirsty. Psychedelics make museums better. I spent 45 minutes staring at Chagall’s The Fiddler in Amsterdam, convinced it was a mirror to my soul. That bearded violinist is me, taken from the comforts of the Shtetl and thrown into the chaos of the modern world.

Museums are only good when you go alone. There is a zero percent chance I will browse any exhibit at the same pace as you. Even at the Corning Museum of Glass, I had to break away from friends so I could learn about the history of glass at my own speed. Plus, I probably don’t care about the piece that made you feel things, and you probably don’t care about the piece that made me feel things. It’s cool; I love going to museums alone and then posting every thought I have in them into the abyss of my Instagram stories.

And yet every time I’m in art museums, I see frustratingly beautiful couples together, miraculously enjoying art at the same speed. On top of that, most of the people I see at art museums are so well dressed that it feels like part of the art. When you’re at an internationally renowned museum, you’re surrounded by the international elite—the types of people with Panamanian bank accounts who inject the blood of the young for breakfast and have access to the drug Bradley Cooper takes in Limitless (it’s real, and the 1% don’t want us to know about it). These people surely have to go to museums when traveling so when they get back home, and friends ask about their vacation to New York, they can talk about seeing Starry Night instead of having to discuss the Eyes Wide Shut sex parties they attended or the human hunting safaris that Michael Bloomberg hosts on Randall’s Island.

There are many of these wealthy hetero couples at museums. The young ones, who likely did nothing to earn their money, seem very comfortable in turtlenecks, as if it’s normal to enjoy sweating while being lightly choked all day. They’re both skinny. And I’d say they dressed up to go to the museum, but these are people who dress up to go everywhere, and it didn’t dawn on them that wearing a sports coat constitutes effort. The old ones are less infuriating because maybe they worked hard for their money and they love wearing leather jackets.

The only couples at museums I approve of are the older men with inexplicably attractive young partners. Normally older men with trophy wives are kind of horrific. Like, Donald and Melania never look happy together. When you see these couples in most places, it feels awkward for everyone involved because we can assume they’re having sex, and we can also assume it’s bad sex.

But anyone can enjoy art. And traveling the globe to see famous works of art is the single thing that these couples actually have in common. And that’s beautiful.

Wandering around museums staring at art and people is fun, even when I’m dressed like a dad at a suburban barbecue, worried the grass might stain my New Balances, and everyone else throws me looks as if I walked into the building assuming it was a Buffalo Wild Wings and was too ashamed to leave despite a lack of deep fried cheesecake bits. 

So I recommend you take some psychedelics and head to a museum alone to enjoy the art and the beautiful couples. Though talking to these people, in reality, might actually suck, visiting museums does not. I might only be convincing myself of this, so you and I both think I’m smart and cultured, or I might really love museums and am still shook by the Shtetl I spent 45 minutes staring at. One never knows in this society.