Museums in Panama


Museums in Panama

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Written by Matt Landau

Tuesday, January 22 2008

It'd always humored my family for some reason to drag me along to museums. Unlike the dentist or piano teacher, their torture rationale was never based on improving health or acquiring a skill, but rather a hope that through some sort of magical osmosis, we all might get smarter just by standing before a Renoir. I imagined it like a tanning booth, but for academics. That was why people got so close to the artwork, I figured. To soak up as much of the smart rays as possible.

We'd go to Miro museums in Spain and Da Vinci exhibits in France, but no piece of artwork ever spoke to me like it did to my parents. They'd leave museums feeling satisfied and enriched, probably heading straight to their favorite hobby shop to buy a new set of watercolors. I'd instead leave museums angry and tired, looking for the nearest firearm shop. Over the years, it became clear that art spoke a different language to me.

My parent's reasoning for museum trips was often vague, claiming that we needed to learn to appreciate these sorts of thing because that's what sophisticated people like us did. If paying good money to stare at splashes of paint was what sophisticated people did, I wanted nothing to do with them. In fact, I much preferred representing the other end of the intellect pool and unhooking all the velvet ropes that lined the showroom floor.

It was a sunny Panama morning when I wandered over to the relatively anonymous Museum of Contemporary Art in Ancon which is situated back near the Smithsonian. The building is semi-conspicuous and unlike the Louvre or the Moma, you can drive all the way up to the front and park in one of the many unoccupied spaces by the door.

The look and feel inside is that of a trendy warehouse. Large air ducts and exposed electric wiring are perhaps supposed to elicit a sort of rawness or industrial vibe that contrasts nicely with the ‘contemporary' artwork lining the walls; either way, I was initially more enthralled with the museums tip jar which was occupied by a lone one dollar bill.

It's always been a habit of mine when in a museum to concentrate on anything but the artwork. And while the decision has never been a preplanned or conscious one, there is an underpinning mindset of well, if I'm here, I might as well make the best use of my time and try to jimmy this padlock. Vending machines are a favorite of mine, researching the selection of potato chips far longer than the sculptures beside it. Water fountains are popular as well, as are panels of light switches and various bathroom gadgets.

Panama's Museum of Contemporary art though did have some interesting work; most notably, one painting by someone obsessed with breasts and another by someone obsessed with vaginas. They must have been part of a series or something.

It was always funny, I thought, that people as imaginative and revered as artists could have the maturity level of a high school boy. These specific pieces displayed hundreds of variations on the traditional body parts, including a small monkey sitting inside one of the vaginas smoking a hookah! Wow! That specific touch, I suppose, is where the true creative genius in the piece lies.

"Upstairs you will see our collection of 3-D pieces" one of the curators whispered to me as I noted that "pieces" are what you call good artwork that resides in museums. These are followed closely in second by "pieces of shit" which you find in third-grade finger-paint classrooms. (Strangely the two have a lot in common.)

It was as if, with his devilish grin, that the curator was letting me in on a breathtaking secret by pointing out the upstairs area. I was still pretty sure he had pocketed our nine dollars of donations as I wandered up the stairs and saw some nice "pieces": among them, a sculpture of a man with something like nineteen arms and a brown piano which sat directly in the center of the showroom.

That's the problem with art. You never know whether what you are looking at is supposed to be on display or not; especially in the world of contemporary art where a leak in the ceiling or a puddle on the floor could just as well be building maintenance issues. I examined the piano further, like the true lover of the arts my parents always wished I would be, searching for one sign-just one knick in the wood or paint stroke on the side-that this was not simply a piano but rather a true piece of art.