Screencap of Fall 2 by Bas Jan Ader, featured in the Hamburger Kunsthalle

I think video art must have been invented by artists who found museums to be as exhausting as I do. The floors are hard on your feet, walking around for hours at a time gets strenuous, and looking at art in general is pretty draining. Video art provides a dark space wherein sitting down for a little while (or sometimes a long while) is totally acceptable and power naps are an option, as evidenced by my snoozing yesterday on a beanbag chair situated between a Marina Abramovic piece and a Vito Acconci piece in the Kunsthalle. I am forever indebted to the video artist community for how they have enhanced my museum experience. My only critique of video art in general would be to suggest the addition of yoga mats and footbaths to exhibitions.

Chagall, Couple with Goat

Yesterday’s visit to the Hamburger Kunsthalle, which included a tour provided by yours truly (sidenote: how cool is it that I get to give a museum tour for my final?!), was actually my third visit. I dropped by on Sunday to prepare my project, but the first time I went I was a fresh-faced, eager, 16-yr-old doing a year-long foreign exchange in a rural town in the middle of Germany. I was at an academic retreat in Lübeck and we took a day trip to Hamburg. Me and one of the chaperones split off from the group to visit the Kunsthalle. My museum companion was named Lars and was the kind of guy Mike Myers’ Deiter parodies, right down to the black turtleneck. He was really enthusiastic about visiting the Old Masters and I was eager to see Degas’ monotypes, which which I ended up writing a paper about two years later in my first ever art history class. This museum visit was during a period of a few years during which I figured out that I wanted to study art history. I remember every museum visit from that time period vividly. I was thrilling for me, then, to return to the Kunsthalle, this time with the amazing art historical toolbox Bryn Mawr has given me and in particular with the multidisciplinary perspective I gained thanks to my 360 experience this semester.

basically my museum companion my first time at the Kunsthalle