El estupor y la maravilla

“A museum visitor is, in general, someone who is not interested in museums, someone who is scarcely interested in art. It is clear to everyone that you do not go to museums for enjoyment, but simply to say that you have been there. What is more: a museum visit is, on principle, a truly funerary experience. It could not be any other way, given that, in a certain sense, museums are, in fact, cultural cemeteries. This is how things are, the museum guards are the gravediggers and the guides the preachers and charlatans of the exequies. For that reason, the attitude of their visitors is not too far-removed from the behaviour shown by those visiting cemeteries; if not to say, identical: they wander this way and that, mournful and disorientated, later to leave, not to return for many a year. The unease created by museums is similar to that provoked by cemeteries when the families of the deceased leave flowers on the tomb after the burial. We should admit it: museum visits do not really appeal anybody; going to a museum is in no way a pleasant way of spending a weekend morning. Those that still go to museums these days are indeed strange people; odd, maladjusted, solitary, ill… But this is the kind of person I have always been interested in; I too am maladjusted, solitary and ill. I am invariably one of them; anyone who knows me, and even those that do not, will bear witness to the fact.”