Museum Musings: more summer busy

The summer tourists are still here.

• I’ve noticed a lot of French and Italian women dressed all in white, with flat shoes. It looks lovely.
• I’ve seen many cases of severely sunburned noses, chests and shoulders, although we haven’t had a hot summer.

Ann E played the flute in the museum

At lunch time last Wednesday, I was fortunate to hear Ann E, who works in the Visitor’s Services department, playing the flute to accompany an art talk on the sculptures.

While Ann played the following on her flute,

• Serabande, from Bach
• The Swan, from San Sans Carnivale of the Animals
• Marias Les Folies d’Espaigne (for Solo flute)

Laura L, from the education department, gave us a talk about the artists and some background to the sculptures, and following her instructions we walked around the sculptures letting the music explain the art to us. It was wonderful.

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Another black titanium American Express card this week. The woman, who bought a beautiful piece of hand blown glass from a New York based glass blower, told me she lives in New Mexico.

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When I heard the volunteer insisting that she had to have a box for the scarf she bought, I thanked god that I wasn’t serving her, and also that we’re finally thinking of the environment, and only have boxes for glass.

After the woman was informed that we don’t have boxes she said, “Well, I’ll just have to buy something that comes in a box, and throw it away so I can use the box.”   She bought a jigsaw puzzle of a Van Gogh painting that was sold in a large triangular box, and after taking the puzzle out, she spent about half-an-hour packing the scarf in the box. She wrote on the bottom of the envelope which she stuck on the box – OPEN the BOX!

I can just imagine the recipient saying, “Thank you, I love jigsaw puzzles,” and then giving the box away to Goodwill without opening it…

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I overheard Michelle, who was wearing a very low cut dress to emphasize her breast enlargement, tell her friend that she only ate a tangerine and a carrot at lunch.

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Too many little girls are walking through the museum wearing high heel sandals.

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“Good afternoon,” I said to Nathan aged six
“What do you say?” said his Dad
“I’m having a good time,” said Nathan

He and his Dad told me they’d done an experiment using lemons which created enough electricity to light LED bulbs. When the family standing next to them overheard out conversation they told us about their experiment where they used potatoes to power a computer.

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I served:

• 50 high school students from Shanghai
• Hayley 13, born in California but now living in Dubai
• Hayley 11, from Brisbane.
• Yonghong McElroy
• Manpreet (her name means “love from the heart” in Punjabi)

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and of course the Screaming Scream screamed so many times that I’m thankful I still have hair on my head.

The wretched awful thing