What do museums have in common with women? According to John Updike both of them suggest radiance, antiquity, mystery and duty

 

 

We parted and I descended the marble stairs. Before pushing through the revolving doors, i looked back, and it came to me that nothing about museums is as splendid as their entrances – the sudden vault, the shapely cornices, the motionless uniformed guard like a wittily disguised archangel, the broad stairs leading upward into Heaven knows what mansions of expectantly hushed treasure. And it appeared to me that now I was condemned, in my search for the radiance that had faded behind me, to enter more and more museums, and to be a little less exalted by each new entrance, and a little more quirky disenchanted by the familiar contents beyond.

 

John Updike’s is one of the rare cases of a novelist who is also an art writer. The above passage is taken from his collection of stories “Museums and Women, and other stories” (1972). The first story, titled as the book itself – Museums and Women – relates Updike’s experience with museums throughout his life, which he has always associated with women, as stated in the opening: “Both suggest radiance, antiquity, mystery and duty”. He starts off by mentioning that the first museum he visited was with his mother. He then remembers that he was taken to the same museum as a schoolchild; he would usually be at the end of the line, while at the top there was the girl he was in love with. The first encounter with his wife was in a college museum. She was a fine art student, while he read history. They were both in Medieval Art course. He followed her through that museum, and many others. He describes their visit to a museum in Boston and he compares her to “a room of porcelain vases”. He then recalls another university museum, where he gets involved In a fantasy with an eighteen-century nude statuette. He concludes his story by relating of a brief love affair he had with a woman in New York City and describes two museums they visited together, the Guggenheim and the Frick. The last paragraph (the above quote) is the concluding reflection after meeting this girl again in the museum where she works. She is still in love with him and he feels upset.

December 16, 2014