Museum Memory #108
by
Jane Borges
Novelist, Journalist and Oral Historian
Appreciating, absorbing and engaging with art requires time, a whole lot of it. In Mumbai, where I reside, time, for some reason, has always been elusive. Most part of the day is carved out for work, and then the odd, small and big errands, and if one manages to steal time for oneself or for a friend, it feels like it’s hard-earned. My memories of museum and gallery visits here, hence, seem to be few and far between—always hurried, rarely pleasurable.
I felt very differently about this, though, when I briefly moved to the town of Stirling in Scotland last year, for a three-month-long writing fellowship. My weekends were spent visiting different towns and new cities with my housemates. As brief as that time was, my explorations were so much deeper. There, I fell in love with the city of Edinburgh, which I kept returning to every few weeks, and The National (formerly Scottish National Gallery), a free art museum, which is home to international and Scottish art from 1300 to 1945.
It’s here that I saw a Vincent van Gogh artwork (Olive Trees) for the very first time—a marvellous work that he created while living in an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in 1889, where he reimagined the garden filled with flowering trees in a host of paintings. In Olive Trees, the swift brush strokes, of different colour, shade and light, and the way they brought alive both the earth and flora are still very vivid. It consumed me whole.
Another work that caught my attention, and also simultaneously amused me was The Skating Minister, a late 18th-century oil painting (attributed to Henry Raeburn), which shows Reverend Robert Walker (1755 -1808) skating on the Duddingston Loch, in austere ministerial outfit. One wonders if it was suitable skating attire in the first place, but it’s also so sincere and comical an image that you are forced to do a double take.
But there’s one painting I really fell in love with—maybe even the painter. I visited the gallery four times in three months, and every time I went, I made it a point to see this artwork, sit with it for a while, observe its intricate details and realistic beauty. It felt less like a painting, more a photograph. I am still trying to wrap my head around why Peter Graham’s Wandering Shadows had that effect on me. Maybe it’s that lone shepherd, trudging through the highlands as the clouds dance and flirt above him, oblivious that he is in the lap of something extraordinary. I felt guided. I felt haunted. I felt grateful, to be here, in this gallery, in Scotland, and be able to experience art the way it deserved to. It was both a luxury and privilege, but it was also hard-earned, like “time” in my home city Mumbai, or Bombay as I love to call it.
VarnikaDesigns initiated the ‘Museum Memories Project’ on April 15, 2020. In this Oral History documentation project, individuals are requested to send in 5 memories of 1 museum they have visited anywhere in the world in their lifetime (more than 1 entry will be required for multiple museums). These memories could be in the form of max 10 photographs, doodles, sketches, poetry, illustrations, along with a write up.
The entry should be emailed to: museummemoriesproject@gmail.com
Copyright for the images and text will be co shared between the project and the individual participants. They cannot be reused without prior permission.
Follow Museum Memories Project on Instagram for more memories. Follow us on Youtube for interviews with experts from the museum and conservation fields. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_jm0yjYjuLFDNsE3JXSgXA/videos
Website: https://www.themumeproject.com
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