{"id":1445,"date":"2017-01-02T23:43:11","date_gmt":"2017-01-03T04:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/?p=1445"},"modified":"2021-10-21T18:18:41","modified_gmt":"2021-10-21T23:18:41","slug":"artistic-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/archives\/1445","title":{"rendered":"An Artistic Adventure"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple months ago, I visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Unfortunately, I had very little money, no car, access only to unreliable tourist buses, and, on top of all that, no smartphone to navigate. My plans ran\u00a0amuck, and my brother and I careened around the entire city before we finally got to the art museum. When once we finally entered, we found its complimentary WiFi had crashed, and\u00a0I had to find a way to get my brother out of the museum district to somewhere with an internet cafe so he could do his homework. I ran out and stared at the Romanesque mausoleums stretching half a mile in every direction: no internet cafes.\u00a0Having no idea what to do, I did what many of us must admit we\u00a0have done before – I sat down on a bench and cried.<\/p>\n

Faintly, I saw a blurred pair of legs approach me. A person sat down beside me. “What’s wrong?”<\/p>\n

It was a kind museum shuttle driver whom I had asked (before I resorted to crying) about internet cafes only to get the response, “Internet cafe? What’s an internet cafe?”<\/p>\n

I wiped the water off my cheeks and explained in detail. He told me and my brother to hop on his shuttle and get off at the Rodin Institute, walk a block, and we’d find ourselves at a library.<\/p>\n

“I can’t watch a pretty girl cry,” he said.<\/p>\n

As the shuttle pulled out into traffic, I stood by the driver’s seat, my hand on a railing, and proceeded to chat with the driver about Philadelphia, African art, and Van Gogh. You see, most of my tears had been the tears of a disappointed child; I had been waiting for days to gaze upon Van Gogh’s genius in person only to arrive in the foyer and\u00a0find myself thwarted by the wretched fallibility of internet routers. The shuttle ground to a halt.<\/p>\n

“That’s the Rodin,” said the driver.<\/p>\n

“I’ll be back,” I assured him. “I can catch this shuttle back to the Museum, right?”<\/p>\n

He tipped his cap, and we hurried off.<\/p>\n

While my brother settled down at the library, I searched the shelves for art books and found a lovely tome titled\u00a0Becoming Van Gogh<\/em> (Denver Art). I retain a sheet of graph paper scrawled with quotes from Van Gogh’s correspondence. I found it today, stuffed in my math binder, complete with underlinings:<\/p>\n