In Awe...

When I was about 11 or 12, my grandparents and parents took me to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA. I have no other memory of my parents or grandparents ever taking me to an art museum - children museums? Sure. But art? No.

I also remember nothing else from that day - or even the rest of the museum.

The only thing I remember, is entering the museum and seeing this piece - in my mind the image is the size of a wall. When I saw it, I just stood there. I didn't see anything else in the rest of the museum (or at least that's what I remember). I saw this image, a little Ruby Bridges, in a white dress, standing tall but so small between the guards that only their torsos and legs were visible. I saw that hateful word plastered on the wall behind her, the remnants of the thrown tomato, the books in her hand.

She just wanted to go to school.

And in my pre-teen mind, this was the simplest and saddest thing I had ever seen. And I cried. I stood there and I cried. In my mind, I didn't leave that spot until my family had exhausted themselves of the museum and were ready to leave. I didn't see any other piece of art that day. Just that one.

It was almost another 10 years after that experience when I decided to become a teacher. And more specifically, a teacher in a predominately black and brown city.

This short blog post isn't to delve into the white-saviorism I fell into, nor my 22 year journey to become an anti-racist teacher - but instead the power that art held and still holds over me.

I saw this painting over 30 years ago for the first time. And a few days ago, I saw it again at the New Britain Museum of American Art. This time, I was surrounded by strangers, all enjoying a warmer February day, bustling about to get the last glimpses of the exhibit before it ended. It wasn't nearly as big I remember it - and maybe this is just a replica. It wasn't as dramatically placed, it was framed and in my memory the original was mural size taking up an entire wall. But maybe it was never that big, maybe it just became that big in my mind because it occupied so much space. People near me, just walked passed it - most nodding in recognition or familiarity. No one stopped very long, not even long enough to read the placard explaining the many white dresses Rockwell commissioned in different sizes until he found the one that had the most dramatic affect.

The entire day, I only saw one man sitting to look at a piece, and even then, when his daughter came to sit with him - he complained about his back aching - and I realized that his sitting wasn't out of awe, but affliction.

The first time I saw this image, was the first time I was every moved to tears by a piece of art. Since then, I have visited many museums chasing that experience in little doses, wishing dramatically to be struck with Stendhal syndrome, and wondering why everyone isn't as moved by art as I am.