The Wreckers, Or Thirteen Blackbirds Looking at Waves

An ekphrastic poem and some thoughts about visiting my favorite museum

The Wreckers, 1874 by William Holbrook Beard, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The Wreckers
Or Thirteen Blackbirds Looking at Waves

The storm did its worst and the ship sank 
beneath the waves. Slowly the waves and sand 
buried the spars and mast until only
a perch remained where the black crows rested,
harbingers of a death that had already 
come. The sailors' bodies sank or washed up 
separately on other beaches. No grim
feasting here for carrion crows. Then why
are they gathered on this mist-shrouded shore?
What stories are they cawing, what bleached bones
are they picking over in memory?
What would-be-king will see them there and think
a crown awaits if only he can be 
bloody enough? 

---

I spotted this painting in the Art of the Americas wing in the MFA in the Salon gallery, where the pictures are hung old-style, stacked one on top of the other all the way up to the ceiling. The theme of this gallery is American Artists Abroad in the 19th Century.

These crows were near the top, where the glare from the lights partly obscured them. I snapped a photo, but it wasn’t a very good one. But I knew I could find a better one online:

The Wreckers by William Holbrook Beard, MFA Boston, photo by Melanie Bettinelli

I love this painting. It has crows. It has a seascape. It has fog and a reflection of the crows in a puddle on the sand, and a distant headland with a lighthouse. It immediately felt like there was a poem in it— possibly more than one. This poem is a quick taken I feel like there’s probably more there if I ponder longer and give it more time.

The official catalog image doesn’t include the ornate gilt frame or the setting on the brocade wallpaper and all the paintings and sculptures surrounding it. If I’d known I was going to be writing this post, I’d have snapped a photo of the whole wall, so you can see the full context. One of the reasons to visit a museum— as opposed to looking at art online— is to experience this curated context and to see the juxtapositions of the various pieces talking amongst themselves. Even when, as in this case, you can’t get close to the canvas to see the details, there is something about seeing a painting in this way that can’t be replicated by a digital experience.

---

And this leads me to pondering more broadly about all the different thing about going the museum that cannot be replicated by digital browsing— though I am also incredibly grateful for all the digital encounters with beautiful art I have had.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is one of my favorite places. I can't count how many times I've been in the last twenty-five years since I moved here. I went several times when I was still a single graduate student. And then I started bringing the children regularly as part of our homeschooling adventure. Every year but two since we began homeschooling in 2012 we have bought a membership and visited several times either to see a special exhibition or to wander through the collections. I estimate two dozen family visits and over three thousand photographs.

Now my teenaged daughters, who started coming when they were seven and five, are artists and look at paintings with an artist's eyes, discussing form and color and shape and composition and technical elements and history and artists. My teenaged boys don't love art in the same way, but they appreciate it more than they like to let on. It's not their thing like it is mine, they say, but they know how to find something interesting in a gallery and they've collected their share of favorite works over the years and have had a rotating gallery of postcards on their bedroom walls.

The Museum has a vast collection and what is on display in the galleries is always changing. Every time we go we see old familiar pieces that we love but also new paintings, new sculptures, new pieces of furniture or articles of clothing or dishes or candlesticks or jewelry or musical instruments. There is always so much to see that we can only ever take in a fraction of it.

When Claudia and Jamie hide out in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankwiler, my mind wants to transpose their adventures to the MFA. I've been to the Met a few times and it's lovely and if it was my local museum I am sure I would love it fiercely. But it doesn't live in my soul like the MFA does. I know exactly which gallery I would sleep in and where I would eat. Oh technologically I am sure its not feasible to hide overnight in the MFA-- you would be caught nowadays, but I can and do dream of living there just for a while.

Also, the museum is a wonderful place in which to meet up with friends from out of town. There is nothing quite so delightful as wandering through the galleries talking with someone-- whether they are an old friend, or whether you've know each other for years only online and this is the first time you've met in person, or whether they are a friend of a friend that you've never met before. Conversations in museums tend to be the very best kinds of conversation. They never lag because there is always something interesting before your eyes to talk about.

People drop the most curious information about themselves when they are face to face with art. It's a brilliant way to learn about facets of a character that would never come up in the mundane setting of a dinner party. At parties I can often feel tongue tied, a lurker and listener instead of an active participant. But in the museum, I am in my element. I borrow brilliance from the art all around me, my brain runs fast and hot and words flow. Not without restraint or consideration of the back and forth of conversation, of course. But there's a freedom and freshness that permeates everything.

Yesterday was our latest foray to the museum. One of my long time facebook friends, Lauren, who I've never met in person, was in town for a wedding along with her husband and a priest friend. (It turned out that the groom is also a long-time Facebook friend who I've never yet met in person though he is kind of local.) She told me they were going to the museum and asked if we'd like to meet up.

Six Bettinellis (one teen was feeling under the weather and stayed home) and three strangers go to a museum and, I think, a marvelous time was held by all. Certainly I had a marvelous time. Every time I've met up with an online friend in person I've enjoyed the experience; but there was something about this day that was special.

I loved the walking and talking, the drifting back and forth between the two groups, watching them meld and then part and recombine in different combinations, watching my children interact with new people, have interesting and insightful things to add to the conversation.

There was the familiar experience of the museum with my family-- seeing and enjoying our old favorites and new works and being able to point them to pieces I knew they'd like. And then the experience of being a guide and helping new friends find the parts of the museum they most wanted to see: Copley and Sargent, Italian Renaissance, Impressionists, seeing some of my old favorites through completely new eyes and also finding new favorites through their eyes.

And the Hamilton quotes were flying. And the argument at lunch about whether a hamburger is a sandwich. And as usual the day was much too short and the parting came too quickly. I hope we can do it again soon.