Art Disarms

Look at this guard looking at art.
Working at a museum, one knows that one is in service of the visitor. The care you deliver inspires and facilitates the visitors’ experience. For the visitor to be served best, everyone who enters the museum should feel welcome and engaged. That includes volunteers and staff. All should feel that the museum is theirs, that they own a piece of it to contribute to its value, and keep up with what the museum has to offer.
Before I took a snapshot of this guard intently looking at Saul Steinberg’s self-portrait, I had already noticed how she acknowledged the visitor and engaged with them, through eye contact, a nod, or a whispered welcome.
The Saul Steinberg exhibit ran from September 2017 through July the next year at the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in D.C. I remembered taking the picture, and that I had taken it inspired by her studying an artwork, and by her friendly demeanor. I browsed through my photos to find it for my next painting. If I had been aware of the equipment she carried on her belt, I had forgotten. Cropping the snapshot with her belt as underscore made it even much more exciting for me to paint her, and it informed the title I have given the piece, one that also speaks to the quality I recognize in Saul Steinberg’s work in particular, time and again.
Illustration by Saul Steinberg