to stand on something vaguely sinister

Like, I imagine, any person that holds a degree in Art History, I go to museums when I travel. I've found that the larger the museum, the more alarmed people seem to be when they watch me walk across a Carl Andre. I've made a ritual of it. I search out the modern/contemporary wing and I walk across the tiles. I'm sure other people must do it (do you?), I've just never seen it.



Maybe one of these days, I'll curl up in a ball atop one.

Each time, this act produces a knot at the back of my throat. Each time, I end up crying later in the day. I think it has something to do with the tension between minimalism and post-minimalism. It has something to do with Ana Mendieta, whose work I love and who is conspicuously absent from many of these museums. (The week she died, protesters held banners demanding "Where is Ana Mendieta?") And it has something to do with museums, in general, those odd refactories of cultural memory.

The most recent time, I was in Chicago, at the Art Institute. I was listening, on repeat, to Westfall, by Okkervil River.