Demuth Museum: Truly a Surreal Experience

A few weeks ago, I decided to (finally) visit the Demuth Museum here in historic downtown Lancaster, PA. Why I never ventured there before now is a mystery. I guess I'm learning that you have to work extra hard at appreciating the unique beauty of familiar surroundings. And isn't that, after all, in many ways what art is all about?

 

If you're not sure who Charles Demuth is/was, you might want to do some quick research at the Demuth Museum's web site.

 

The museum is not just a "museum"... the small brick row home was his mother's house, the house where Demuth grew up from the age of 7, where he spent most of his adult life when he was not traveling abroad, and more importantly, where he did most of his work.

 

I stood in his studio.

 

At the top of a very narrow, very steep, winding wood and horsehair plaster staircase is Demuth's old studio/bedroom, very much the way he might have left it. It was smaller than my studio at home. But the placement of the doorway and the windows mimic almost exactly my own studio. There stood within my reach an old easel with a large Demuth oil painting on it. There was a small Georgia O'Keeffe painting that she had given to her dear friend, just hanging there obscurely on the wall next to the window.

 

I looked out his windows at the Trinity Lutheran Steeple.

 

 

I walked in his mother's beloved gardens.

 

 

 

Walking down the street, if you weren't looking for it, you might just walk right past it...

 

 

 

Museum entrance...