Is It Art In Here Or Is It Just Me?

Pam: Archie’s done it again. He makes me nuts!

Ann: What’d your boss do now?

Pam: We have a very important client. She’s a nice, independently wealthy woman who offered to give us a personal tour of a private museum she’d established. I didn’t want to appear entirely ignorant so, since Archie had been there before, I asked him what kind of museum it was.

Ann: Let me guess… he didn’t even know.

Pam: No. He knew it was a western art museum. That made sense since it’s in a western state. So I spent a month studying up on western art.

Ann: How much can there be on western art?

Pam: A lot! I memorized everything there is to know about Remington statues and paintings, the entire Russell collection. I could immediately distinguish a Bierstadt landscape from a Moran. I knew the pre-civil war art of Catlin, Bodmer, Miller, and Kane. I learned everything I could find on even relatively unknown late nineteenth century artists such as Gaul and Browne. And I was prepared to speak intelligently on the action and suspense in the works of Scheyyogel and Berninhaus.

Ann: I’d think you get points for just pronouncing Scheyyogel and Berninhaus! So you must have really impressed your client.

Pam: Not at all.

Ann: But you knew so much about western art!

Pam: Yeah, too bad it was a museum dedicated to wildlife art. I walked in and at first glance it seemed right. But fairly quickly it dawned on me that this was not a western art museum at all. I muddled through the tour mostly asking questions. At one point I was able to squeeze in a comment that one piece reminded me of the action you see in the western works of Berninhaus.

Ann: That must have impressed her, huh?

Pam: No, she just said, “Who?”

Ann: Well there you go…she didn’t know anything about western art and you didn’t know anything about wildlife art. So you’re even.

Pam: In the meantime I have all this knowledge about western art running around in my head for no reason. What am I supposed to do with that?

Ann: I think you should get even with Archie. Take him to a western art museum and tell him absolutely everything you know. That’ll teach him!