A friend and I visited the Boston Museum of Fine Arts on April 12, 2025. Our experience started in the coffee shop where we were urged to wash bananas before eating even though no sink was provided for visitors. We were also reminded that “the Black male body … has been … criminalized” (this will be Karmelo Anthony’s defense against his wrongful prosecution for murdering Austin Metcalf?):
How about this task for our future AI overlords: custom stained glass for every house? Here’s what rich people were able to get from Tiffany and John La Farge back in the Gilded Age:
Optimus isn’t ready yet to fabricate the glass, but we can check in with ChatGPT’s response to “Please design me a stained glass window that depicts a happy golden retriever chasing a squirrel with palm trees and orchids in the background”:
(People keep saying that AI will be deflationary, but that makes sense to me only if human wants are finite. If I can get AI to design and install a custom wrap for our car every 6-12 months at a reasonable cost then I would pay for that whereas right now it is mostly businesses with a commercial imperative that will pay for wraps.)
At a van Gogh exhibit, we learned about teenage rebellion in the bad old days: put on a suit and go to work.
The French family that van Gogh painted literally went extinct (though only a conspiracy theorist would say that they’ve been replaced by migrants):
Visitors and staff had both voluntarily entered the crowded museum in reliance on inexpensive face masks as protection from aerosol viruses:
Children learn about art, and the importance of voluntarily entering crowded indoor environments while wearing a mask, from a docent:
The museum posts the idea that the ideal life for a woman is to have “autonomy”, defined by “with no kids or husbands”, so that they can “explore their identities”:
The museum had organized an exhibition by a Black artist who was an expert on Blackness and social justice. Wikipedia says that he married a white woman and then the two of them moved to Black-free Mexico. It would have been interesting to discuss this body of work with Black visitors to the Museum of Fine Arts, but I didn’t see any during my three hours there.
I posted the following on Facebook with a prefix of “Team of Harvard PhDs labels two bathrooms:”
(A loyal reader here and on Facebook pointed out that the discourse on restrooms and gender should properly be posted in multiple languages and also Braille. Given the recent influx of migrants to Maskachusetts, why not versions in Arabic, Haitian Creole, and Spanish?)
A Trump-hating, Musk-hating, Hamas-loving MIT PhD read the “Team of Harvard PhDs” prefix literally:
I don’t see any evidence of Harvard or Ph.D.’s being involved. Is it safe to assume that you are just making that up, or do you actually have information related to that? (For non-Bostonians, it’s worth noting that Phil is having his hissy fit at the MFA, which is not affiliated with Harvard… and is not even particularly close to Harvard)
A Manhattan-based immigration/asylum profiteer responded
Who cares.
to which I followed up with
who cares? How about the intellectual elites who wrote the epic-length sign depicted above? … like Jeffrey Epstein, that sign didn’t hang itself. And I don’t think it wrote itself either!
(The idea is that people who follow Joe Biden’s example and fly the trans-enhanced Rainbow Flag don’t actually care about Rainbow Flagism?)
Over lunch, my Boston-based friend (highly educated and paid) said that all of the young people in Gaza should be entitled to move to and live forever in the U.S. When I asked why those who attacked Israel get priority over poor, sick, disabled, and elderly folks in the poorest African countries, she said that they too should be able to move to the U.S. In fact, “I don’t think countries or borders should exist.”
Did you see the famous Boer Hunt painting in the great room?
Er…, sorry, Boar Hunt?
https://collections.mfa.org/objects/31577
They should have washed the bananas before putting them out for sale, whether or not they provide a sink for customers. That said, maybe they did wash them, and the sign is just there to cover liability. Still, my quibble isn’t about the washing or the missing sink; it’s about the lack of inclusion.
How is an illegal migrant or a legal immigrant, who doesn’t read English, supposed to understand what the sign says? They might recognize that it’s a banana and that it costs $2.00, but how would they know that the sign is advising them to wash it before eating?
The sign needs to include the “wash” in the 10+ most spoken languages that we support in the U.S. to ensure we are truly being inclusive.
As for your highly educated and well-paid Bostonian friend, who opposes national borders, will she also take a stand against locked, private homes? Anyone familiar with Cambridge, MA, knows there are unhoused people living on its streets. Will she open her own doors to them? After all, if one rejects the concept of borders, shouldn’t that principle apply to personal property as well?
As for the MFA, I used to visit often back in the 1980s, both during my time at SMFA and after graduating. I was never particularly drawn to modern abstract art, but everything else was great and the selection is wide and extensive. Beyond the paintings, the museum houses great artifacts from around the world. To truly see and appreciate the full collection, you will need at good two full days.
> “autonomy”, defined by “with no kids or husbands”
Hahaha! I have often questioned the contemporary definition of autonomy as well. This definition, IMO, is very outward-focused. In the sense that it assumes the existence of an outward entity which can only see what you want them to see.
For example, commiting a crime and no-one noticing means that the person is not a criminal (analogus to the contemporary definition of autonomy). However, commiting a crime may change the consciousness of the non-criminal, which is not captured by the definition, i.e. the definition is dependent on the existence of an external identity.
Autonomy in the Christian-sense may even entail being free from greed/lust etc., if we define the underlying consciousness being the entity which wants to be free. This is not captured by the contemporary definition.