On My Days Off, I Walk the Museums Alone

Hello, everyone. This is Butler Monsieur. By trade I am surrounded by artworks day to day, and yet I love, on my days off, going out of my way to visit a museum. Today, a slightly eccentric story of such a day off.

When I face artworks at work, I cannot help but see them with the eye of "one who protects." Is this temperature and humidity safe, is there any damage, how should it be stored — before savouring the beauty, I first fret over the condition. That is an important duty in itself, but at times I long to set that eye down, for a while.

So on my days off, I go, deliberately, to become "simply one viewer." Forgetting everything — the care, the value — I just stand before a single painting. And curiously, the "voice" of a work, which I never noticed at work, comes quietly through. Ah, the painter hesitated with the brush here; ah, this still life is steeped in its maker's solitude. It is precisely when I set specialist knowledge aside for a moment that there come instants when the heart is moved.

I stand before one painting, lost to time. And by the time I leave the hall, I feel somehow refreshed, as if the sediment of the heart had been washed away. To be moved, purely and simply, by something beautiful. Not forgetting this feeling may be, in fact, my quiet support in serving as a guardian of beauty.

Do visit a museum yourselves now and then, everyone — drifting in without aim or prior knowledge. If you meet a favourite painting, that is already a splendid day off. And so I, too, shall throw myself into my daily work once more.