Museums I Have Seen

Jean and I have visited various of the museums in Washington, DC, and these have included both art galleries and those at the Smithsonian. Oddly I recall little of these, except perhaps for the large steam locomotive in one of them. This also holds true for many of the museums we doubtless saw on the trup we took circling the country.

I also remember the museum at Dinosaur National Monument, the Getty museum at Malibu (my second cousin took us there once when we visited them in LA), the state museum in Iowa (which I visited as a child), the museums in Golden Gate Park — both the DeYoung and the NaturalHistory, the Huntington Library (I was there once in San Pedro days, but I seem to recall that Jean and I visited the place in much more recent days). And we have visited the railroad museum in Sacramento as well as some historical building near the California state capitol. I find the trouble I have with museums is that I get tired of the slow walking-standing pace that is associated with viewing exhibits. Even though I am interested in what I am looking at I presently weary of continuing on.

One place that I would certainly return for another visit, even though Jean and I have been there are least two, possible three times, is Hearst Castle. I have heard derisive and derogatory comments about the place but to me it quite fulfills the name Hearst gave it “the Enchanted Hill.” The setting of the place and the gardens and outside pool are to me simply out of this world. The architecture also appeals to me, even in its unfinished state. I have no wish to travel around Europe seeing museums etc. — what Hearst garnered and used to furnish San Simeon is enough for me.

There were certainly unlikable characteristics of the Hearst personality but in a way he was larger than life and what he left at San Simeon is a mark that few other persons of wealth in the U.S. have left to grace their having lived.

During the trips I made, perforce, to Europe in connection with work at Shell I visited several museums in Holland and what I recollect of those are Rembrandt’s and Van Gogh’s paintings. These were memorable but the place that really captured my interest was the British Museum which I was able to visit on one of my passages through London. The British in the days of the empire carted off many items of artistic and historical interest and these are ensconced and on display at the British museum. Great granite carvings and statues from Mesopotamia, the first mathematical papyrus from Egypt and such national treasures as the Magna Carta — going through the museum is like walking through history.

But the most impressive part of the museum, carrying with it (for me at least) a most profound reaching-out to one of the most significant places in man’s history is the room containing the Elgin marbles. These consist of statues and carvings (metopes) from the Parthenon that one Lord Elgin carted off. What he was doing in Greece I don’t know, perhaps the British had taken Greece over for awhile. These are arranged in this special room sort of in the relative positions they occupied in their original setting.

The effect on me was deep and striking — I felt like I was in the place of Plato and Socrates and I felt again the impact of these Athenians, perhaps the most remarkable men that have ever existed. What they did with the limited amount of scientific data (if you could call it that) available to them is amazing. Granted that what they said and thought seems a little dated now it was then and for centuries thereafter the acme of man’s thought and understanding. The Bible and Koran seem banal and trivial in comparison. I recall sitting on one of the benches in the room letting the magic of the place penetrate my being.

At the present time Greece wants the pieces shipped back to Greece. They should instead be thankful that happenstance put the marbles in a place where they are preserved and were saved from their likely fate of decay and disintegration had they remained on the Acropolis. Present day Greece has as much affinity and connection to the Athens of 2500 years ago as Egypt has to the pharaohs.

I have no desire to visit the unusual parts of the globe — for the most part I would rather view them through books and the National Geographic magazine. The only possible exception is a faint desire to actually stand on the Acropolis in Athens, and to actually be inside the confines of the Parthenon itself. The only comparable place of magic to me would be to stand in the center of the Stonehenge ruins.