I love the storytelling work that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York does. For example, the Frame of Mind podcast highlights short stories of people’s relationships with museums – around fifteen minutes long each. It is a great listen.

Last year, I watched a video by The Met on their YouTube channel as part of their “Meet Me at the Met” series. The video was an interview with Orhan Pamuk, a Nobel Prize-winning author. The video has stuck with me ever since.

When I think about “the artist was here,” the interview with Pamuk comes to mind. Orhan mentions that he found inspiration in several paintings in the museum. Museums can inspire writers. That has stuck with me. On reflection, I have written a fair bit about museums as places, and I have so much more I want to say. Museums inspire me.

Pamuk talks about the “museum-ness” of the museum. This makes me think about all the qualities of the museum as a place: the interior design, how each room feels, how it feels to walk between rooms, the art on the walls, the conversations that people have while studying an artwork.

A trip to the museum engages all my senses. I become aware of the past (through the art I am looking at) and the present (through the people I hear in the room) all at once. I think about the future (by reflecting on what I see and what it means), too.

What stood out to me most about the video was that both Pamuk, who in addition to being a writer also painted, and I had visited the museum. The artist was here. Watching the video again, Pamuk enters the Monet room in which one of my favourite works of art is kept: Ice Floes. A painting in front of which I stood for many minutes, admiring every detail. A painting so captivating I didn’t want to leave the gallery.

Countless people will have been in the Monet room; the same can be said of every room in every museum. Two people who have been to a museum have shared space, maybe not at the same time, but through time. When a friend mentions a museum that we have both been to, I think about this idea. We have both been there; we both have a story to tell.

This post was inspired by a prompt Frances gave me when we were exchanging blog post titles. I knew I wanted to write something for this prompt, but I had no idea what. I ended up writing about Sparking joy, but I kept the idea of "The artist was here" in my mind for when I was ready to write about it. Some things take time.