I stepped onto the escalator and looked up. It was pulling us toward and through the sprawling tunnel. The walls grew tight as we ascended higher, but when the tunnel ended, the museum began, and we emerged into a soft and hazy light.
I found myself standing in a white room, the corridors built with ribbed arches and peculiar designs; patterns sagging off the massive walls. I turned to the general company I had been keeping and then bid them adieu, striking off on my own to wander through the museum. Other tourists were striding down the length of the enormous corridors and grinning, many of them wearing straps round their necks and contorting themselves into ghastly positions, just to snap a few shots off of their cameras.
It was at this point I found myself drawn toward a room occupied by a massive tabletop and chairs; a piece cleverly titled, Under the Table. The huge table was made out of wood and five chairs that sat round it; dwarfing the human presences which swarmed about. I stooped slightly and went under the table, and as I did so the shade grew chill upon my back and I perhaps entered a reverie. It was very much alike to that nameless feeling one experiences as a child; the feeling of being small within a very massive world. At length I crawled back out and dusted off my palms. I turned and headed toward the other rooms.
Each room that I then entered was dominated by a single artist’s vision, and I wandered through a gallery of images. There was Basquiat – his sprawling channels of graffiti art, darkened by a certain ambiguity of color. Koons – the mounted sculptures of stainless steel in which one’s reflection turned and reeled. Warhol – the familiar scenes of American pop art; and several other artists who will not be named within this sentence.
I then found myself standing in another room. In the corner was a rotating column of digital lights, their tinged reflections peeling off the wall. Cryptic dialogue was flashing on the column, and it appeared to be a law enforcement interview, although it remained ambiguous. I was among others in this room, a crowd of general spectators. A certain calm had fallen upon us all; the appreciative lethargy of art.
Then I left. I walked back toward the glass elevator which was rising through a hole within the floor. I stepped through the door and mounted onto the glowing ring of lights. The floor dropped suddenly and I was delivered toward the exit.
