Sunday, May 29, 2011

Cafe Liebermann

I love museums. Maybe even more I love museums cafe's. - Just kidding.. But seriously, I am not the type of person that visits an exhibition with educational headphones on my ears. I think it is important to learn about art, but I prefer to do that before or after I see the exhibition. Somehow I want to keep my senses open for what I see and what I feel, when standing in front of the painting or the sculpture for the first time. I want to trust my perception and what speaks to me and what touches me.
Because of that I love museums cafes. I feel there is a kind of osmosis happening just by sitting in a cafe that is part of the museum. Even if you don't see the artwork there, you feel the presence of all the art in the surrounding rooms, it speaks and comforts.
There are great museum cafes and not so great ones. I have very fond memories of visits to museums - and the cafes' - in Hannover, Berlin and Hamburg in Germany, where I lived for many years. These visits often happened with girlfriends.
Sometimes I go just by myself. On the last day of my recent trip to Germany, arriving at the Hamburger trainstation and having some free hours before going to my girlfriend's house, I left me suitcases in the station and went to the nearby Hamburger Kunsthalle.
After seeing two great exhibitions in the Gallery of Contemporary Art I arrived at the cafe, Cafe Liebermann just before they closed the counter. I still got a glass wine and sat for an hour in the empty cafe and had the best time. It was like a gift
It felt as if I arrived at myself. There was this protected space that allowed me to just be there, looking back at all my encounters with family and my old firends I had seen in these last three weeks of my trip.  I came to a quiet point in myself.  I wrote a postcard to my friend and notes on the red paper bag from the store that I would later add to my journal.

Cafe's and museums are very important places to be.

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