the second pma visit

When I went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for the second time, I almost couldn't find the original room of statues again. It was almost as though the curators had placed it out of the way, hidden in an alcove between galleries The room seemed like the briefest of passages, a transitioning moment manifested into this simple room. It was a small room, the kind where you would have to pass through it to get to another gallery. It felt like an in-between. It fit with my previous ideas of the exhibit, or even my own ideas of religion: I thought it might be a little holy room of altars. Perhaps the fact that it was basically shoved out of the way resonates with my own ideas of religion, at least in the way I relate to it personally. Not only that, but it fit with how fleeting the seasons are and how the room was the manifestation of that fleeting moment.

Bacchus as Autumn was particularly the biggest draw for me; my fervent interest in mythology had made me stop and examine the room in the first place, and I had a personal link to Bacchus. Along my spine I have a tattoo of a quote by Dionysus in The Bacchae. I almost passed it by the first time I saw this room, mostly because it blended into the wall. The statues were as alabaster as the walls; the only thing that distinguished them from the room were the indigo shadows that cast them into three dimensional space. It was almost as though the statues had once been part of the wall, and now they were slowly emerging to take a life of their own. Maybe the curator didn't plan it that way, but I thought the invisibility effect was far more effective. Had the statues been in a room painted in burgundy, or some other bold color, I probably would have passed the room by. It would have looked like a standard gallery full of statues, an ordinary exhibit that might not even have stopped me. Instead, I was fascinated by the way the room seemed to escape the notice of passerby.

Other than the occasional security guard and a couple of stragglers who seemed more interested in the exhibits lying ahead, I was solitary. I remember that I thought the room a sort of altar, a quiet place where the remnants of the past remained. There was a gentle hush that had settled in the room, and it was almost as attractive to me as the concept that Bacchus as Autumn personified. Like Bacchus of mythology and of classic depiction, this Bacchus was a young man, barely pubescent, smiling and brandishing a bunch of grapes as well as a libation dish. I think I said before how I found this interesting, how autumn was a season of harvest as well as the death of many living things. I still find it interesting that a young man, a young god even (for Bacchus was definitely a deity that arose much later than the original pantheon), was chosen to personify such a penultimate season.

The statues stood at each corner. I wonder what the effect would have been had the statues been placed somewhere other than the arbitrary four corners, or if the room had not been square. If the room was round, for an example, and the statues had their own little alcove to stand in, the exhibit would have looked a great deal more impressive. As it was, it almost felt like the placement of the statues were an afterthought. I'm not going as far as to say that the room felt as though the curator had haphazardly placed the statues there. There had been great care to place the statues in the corner, facing the room and each other. But it seemed like such an uncreative solution, and such a mundane, arbitrary way to display the statues. It definitely gave off the feeling that this gallery wasn't a gallery, but instead something to briefly glance at as you make your way through the museum.