NO FLASH AT THE MUSUEM

There are many museums in New York, and the one I was most familiar with as a kid was the American Museum of Natural History. You know, the one with dinosaurs and whatnot. 

As going to New York City became a casual endeavor for me in 2024, the following year brought new insights into museum traveling, namely the spot called The Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the Met, for short. It’s the sort of place you can’t just spend 45 minutes in, like I did in the British Museum in London (trying to peer over a crowd of tourists snapping photos of the Rosetta Stone).

At The Met they offer student discounts for admission where you can pay what you wish to donate. With my camera in hand, I was ready to snap away at some thousands of years old artifacts. The no flash rule applies to museum work for a number of reasons when it comes to photography in places like these. It’s to protect old ancient objects from light damage over time, to avoid disruption and preserve the integrity of the institution.

The photo above was of a reindeer made of reflective iridescent bubbles. It wasn’t reflective enough to display me taking the picture like that of a mirror, yet it created a cool effect of bead-like spheres of various sizes that comprised the body. Combined with atmospheric dim lighting of the room the light shines off the creature in a spectacular way. 

Yet the strangest part about this reindeer is that I believe it was taken in the ancient Japan section of The Met. The lettering on the orange banner in the background confirms my suspicion. Why would a reindeer be in the Japan section? Irrelevant detail to the story but an interesting point. The world may never know...

Worlds collided that day. My best friend from high school happened to be in the city at the time, and someone who had become one of my best friends this past year was visiting the city with me. These two worlds converged in The Met as I convinced my high school friend to spend an hour with us in the museum. It was beautifully and accidentally arranged and I wasn’t sure they’d get along. They were from very different backgrounds. Yet at the end of the day they were tethered to each other in that moment by being close friends of mine.

Back to the main point of this story, which is to not use flash at the museum. We were in a great hall of African sculptures of the sort, and my idiot instinct, a primitive reflex to be funny and win the appeal of others, broke the most important unspoken rule in museums: don’t use the camera flash. I barely got the flash going before I immediately pointed the lens down, knowing it was an awful idea. What was I thinking? 

As if on cue, a museum employee shuffled over, as if I had stepped on an invisible tripwire. What had become a split second decision to spam capture photos of my high school friend avoiding my gaze, turned into a supernova of light that clearly attracted unwanted attention.

There’s not too much left to say about The Met. Apologizing to the museum employee was borderline embarrassing but I quickly laughed it off. I suppose it’s just fun when worlds collide, especially those close to you. Old friends logically know you better, because they’ve been your friend for a longer amount of time especially at these pivotal ages when we grow up. Yet as old friends drift apart in physical proximity and can devote less of their time to you, new friends get to know you better in a more literal sense. At college, you’ll see them everyday or at least more often then the old friends. They know you better because they’re more up to date on the current happenings of your life. 

It’s like the reindeer made out of bubbles. If the reindeer represents me, then it’s made up of individual pieces that create the whole. Whether those pieces or spheres in this case are memories or knowledge or connections with others, that’s up to interpretation. I just know that in the Metropolitan that day, it felt nice to be surrounded by people I knew I cared about deeply and I knew they felt the same. Even if they came from different cultures, time and space.

Should I have taken a picture with flash in an open exhibit at a New York museum? No. Yet it’s just another humorous memory, another spherical shaped memory that adds to our whole being like the makeup of the reindeer’s body. We’re going to make mistakes in life, we’re going to have friends old and new, and sometimes we’re even going to feel out of place (like the reindeer did in the Japan exhibit). 

But one thing is painfully clear. The donate what you wish for student admission to The Met is a real test of one’s moral qualms. I donated a dollar for admission. Oops.