I took eighteen trips to art museums since last May. I took eighteen trips since getting the green light from my team of medical professionals to leave my house of immunoisolation, the result of a rare and incurable autoimmune disease triggered by the COVID booster. I took eighteen trips to art museums in New York City, Philadelphia, my home state of New Jersey, Richmond, and Baltimore. I drove six hours each way to the Hamptons to visit the Pollock-Krasner house, because I am, after all, a Krasner. I drove seven hours each way to the Virginia Museum of Fine Art to see the Frida Kahlo exhibition, because Frida struggled with health conditions, too. I hired car services to chauffeur my rollator and me to the Met, MoMA, the Guggenheim, the Frick, the Whitney, some multiple times. I hired the same service to take me to the Barnes Foundation and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I took eighteen trips to art museums. I sneaked off to the Princeton Art Museum when work was going badly. I needed art to breathe. Sometimes I went by myself. More often, I met with writer friends, or lifelong work colleagues, even a second cousin, once removed whom I’d never met before. I took eighteen trips to art museums. In Philadelphia, my newfound cousin and I positioned ourselves in front of Modigliani and Soutine. We crowded the sole Chagall, because we noticed the yarmulka right away. We held up our cameras for selfies. In Baltimore, my friend the Yiddishist and I posed in front of Soutine, too. Gertrude Stein gave me the clue to hunt for the origin of Baltimore Museum of Art founders, the Cone sisters, descended from Kahn in Bavaria. I took eighteen trips to art museums. I found my breath. I found common interests and friendship. I took eighteen trips to find chai.
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Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has been featured in more than seventy literary journals, including nonfiction in The Manifest Station, The Journal of Expressive Writing, Collateral, South 85, and Vassar Review. A multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, she lives and teaches in New Jersey, USA.