A Few Hours at the Frick

On the joy of connecting visual art to literature.

Hi friends.

I have much to report from New York, but I’ll start with my trip to The Frick Collection, which is open again after a long renovation. Not that I could tell the difference because somehow, even after all those years of living in New York, I had never visited it before. Try something new, I thought. Be curious. Hop on a subway if you only have a few hours free. So I took a little hike uptown.

Outside the museum, I ran into one of my mother’s oldest friends in the world. The both of us were visiting New York from elsewhere and somehow both ended up at a museum at 12:30 on a Monday. A stranger took our picture so I could send it to my mother. Before we parted ways, my mother’s friend complimented me on my highlights, and the next time I wonder why I spend a small fortune on my hair every year I will remember it is just for those moments, when you run into someone on the street somewhere far away from home and they tell you that your hair looks nice and you just think, “Thank you, finally someone noticed.”

I thought maybe it would be a good writing prompt for someone out there today: two women running into each other on the street in New York, twenty-six years in age apart. A great surprise, and an embrace.

Anyway. Onto the art. I have two pieces I want to focus on from the collection. Viewing them sparked specific thoughts about how I write and what literature can accomplish. These are just some quick ideas I gathered while standing in a crowded hallway of a beautiful museum on a gray fall Monday in New York. Right after a nice compliment.