Museum Joy
by Naomi Shihab Nye
On touring the McNay Museum, San Antonio, with Connor James, Age 5
1
These random pathways lead to the door?
Who made them?
Somebody really lived here once?
She had a big yard!
If lightning strikes this deer sculpture,
will it fall over? Hello big deer!
Why do artists paint naked bodies so much?
And the sculptures too.
They’re all nude, ha ha.
That whole wall is nude!
I thought that statue was moving!
This is made out of string!
In the video where the ice melts in the glass
and the pear gets mold on it,
the apricots don’t get mold.
Because they aren’t cut, you know.
You thought it was a painting!
How could you?
Didn’t you see the bubbles were moving
from the melting ice?
How long did the artist wait for the mold?
This could happen on your table at home right now.
I can’t believe an artist made a whole sculpture
from Cheeze Doodles. All those people standing
and sitting around like at a party.
When some of them started moving, I almost fainted.
We have to stay here for a while and keep looking at it.
What if the glasses floated off the table?
Is there a motion detector?
When John Baldessari crosses his arms
and says, “I am Making Art,”
does he mean all the time or just in that video?
Look how he lifts one hand, then the other hand.
Then he raises his arms.
I am raising my arms too.
Can we go back to the Infinity Room one more time?
Can I paint when I get home?
I feel like I need to paint.
2
Artists can do anything.
My whole childhood,
a museum surrounded me
every Sunday afternoon.
No one could be sad with art.
A whole wall with one giant Matisse!
Days got dressed and dressed again.
I remember thinking Paul Klee
changed from week to week.
He waited for me.
Art enters us like a tonic.
Beams into dreams, leverage of light.
Hovers around us later in bed,
swaths of mixed blue.
Who else might you be?
Try it.
You’re free.
3
Shelf of sunset colored glass vases
high up like sky
If I could have one thing in this museum
stuck in my mind to look at every day
I take that
No I take that
smooth shape
of a baby’s head
Diego’s little girl staring
A friendly glass snake
Look, it’s winter, spring, summer, fall
Jesus looks like he’s crying
His eyes are wet
This painting is 500 years old?
That means Jesus has been crying
for 500 years
Bits
blue owls
crumpled papers
I like Georgia O’Keefe
I really like her orange sky
I’m having better thoughts now
I’m looking out the window
It looks like a painting out there
*
Naomi Shihab Nye's most recent books are Everything Comes Next - Collected & New Poems, Cast Away (poems about trash), The Tiny Journalist, and Voices in the Air - Poems for Listeners. She is the Young People's Poet Laureate for the Poetry Foundation.
