I know life is getting...grim for a whole lot of people right now but that only confirms that free entertainment and beauty are more needed now than ever and the Yale Art Gallery is free with so much to offer!

We expected a nice museum, though not enormous, maybe with a famous name or two tossed in we can recognize but no, this place was huge. Four whole floors just chuck full of fine art with so many famous names. A real smorgasbord of human creativity that touched on so many cultures and time periods around the world.

Of course I was already in a good mood because I managed to parallel park almost directly in front of the door in one try, during traffic, without attracting an audience of spectateurs. And then I had enough quarters to stuff that goddamn parking meter until it timed out. It’s the little things in life we must celebrate.

ANYWAY. The first exhibit we walked by on the main floor was the African section. I admit, I do not know much about African art or culture, which I realize I could be better at. These pieces were mostly tribal but from all over the continent. A lot of wild animals, masks, colorful figurines. Granted we were the only ones there and the guard followed us around like he thought we were going to stage a heist. Little intense. But I suppose… we’re both white and our ancestors were likely dicks sooo… I get it. But that’s not to say some white people aren’t capable of being respectful.

To be fair since we were there during an intense lull the first two floors had guards who continued to follow us. It was… uncomfortable. At one point I found a silver serving tray made by Paul Revere and went to point out the plaque that this information was written on when a guard barked at me not to touch the exhibits (in this case literal furniture hiding the damn plaque.) My inner 8-year-old knee-jerk responded by yelling, “I DIDN’T TOUCH ANYTHING!” And I honest to god didn’t. Not that my dirty paws could turn furniture (much we’d already seen at antique stores) into dust but you know, respect and all. The last concerning encounter we had was with a very large black guard literally hiding in the shadows of a nook waited for us to pass before saying in a booming voice, “How are you today?” But it wasn’t his stature that made me weary, nor the fact he was hiding in the shadows, it was the pained wheezing that came after his salutations that made me want to ask if he was OK. His facial expression did not seem to be the sort who’d want to be checked in on so I uncomfortably scuttled away, wondering if I was being trolled for being just another timid looking white chick. (I’m totally fine with a little teasing if this was the case.)

Luckily people started to fill the museum and we stopped getting tailed right around the time I squealed with excitement to see not one, not two, but three Van Goghs, none of which I’ve seen before, and I’ve seen almost his entire catalogue save for those in personal collections and Starry Night which is always on tour. That one’s on my bucket list but this one… was a lovely surprise!

We also got to see some Georgia O’Keefe landscapes, some decidedly not ballerina Degas, a couple Jackson Pollocks which looked exactly like the projectile baby vomit and/or splooge I thought it’d look like, quite a few Picassos that seemed like a decent into madness, er, I mean Cubanism, and some others that sounded vaguelly familiar.

These notables were smattered about in different places but we got to see a lot. Roman pottery and mosaics, a likely haunted ancient Meso-American doll, another Meso-American figurine that looked bizarrely like the trash Muppet in The Labyrinth, a gorgeous intensely ornate Buddha that was courting a young photographer who was taking photos of EVERY angle, a delightful depiction of Kali, another Buddha that was thin and serene, some unreasonably jacked baby Jesuses, some Cherubs that probably came from the depths of Hell, some fun abstract sculptures, an exquisite painting of a baby declaring her mom’s titty as her territory, some photography that gave me some ideas about my own, a bunch of “you know what a baby/horse/cat/dog look like, right?” Kinda paintings. A cursed jester, a terrifying baby tinman, some other super questionable scenes on canvas. Oh! And some really impressive shadow puppets! Which were colored on their back sides??

We were having so much fun by this time we had to go back out to feed the meter again. All and all we were there for almost three hours. We saw everything and even swung by the gift shop to buy a magnet and some post cards.

This place was so worth the drive and the fact it was free was astounding. And it was right next to the British Art Museum if you really want to be a glutton for free art. We were pretty exhausted though so we saved this for another day. Perhaps after I remember more than just Banksy as British artists…