Jemima West Quotes

If art means as much to you as it does to me, or even if you're just exploring the art world for the first time, I invite you to turn off the boob tube, pry the Wii controllers from your kids' hands, and drag them to a museum.

During my time at high school and university in Kreuzlingen and St. Gallen, I traveled around Europe looking at art, visiting artists, studios, galleries and museums.

I grew up going to museums. I was privileged to discover art and artists in a very personal way.

When I'm in New York, my favorite place on the planet is the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

My education in the arts began at the Cleveland Museum of Art. As a Cleveland child, I visited the museum's halls and corridors, gallery spaces and shows, over and over. For me, the Cleveland Museum was a school of my very own - the place where my eyes opened, my tastes developed, my ideas about beauty and creativity grew.

As hard as I try I cannot get myself to three museums in any one city. The only museum I've ever really enjoyed was the Picasso Museum in Barcelona and I think that's because it's small and you can touch things.

I enjoy looking, learning, smiling, and engaging with art, sometimes even rejecting it.

But if I had to choose a single destination where I'd be held captive for the rest of my time in New York, I'd choose the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Even when I was a little girl, I remember going to the Museum of Modern Art. I think my parents took me there once or twice. And what I really remember is the design collection.

I'm enamored with the art world.

I want to know art.

When I get some down time on the weekends, I love gallery hopping with friends, in particular checking out Gagosian Galleries - between the three in N.Y.C., there's always a great show on or something cool to see.

It's a lovely experience walking around a museum by yourself.

When some people were going around being surf bums and tennis bums, I was being a gallery bum. I really liked galleries.

If I can't be fishing or hunting, I want to be in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

At our house, my father loved the arts. Among his favorite things was 'The Metropolitan Museum of Art Album of Miniatures' - a box set of small books on different art periods. I'd go into the living room at night and sit on the arm of his chair as he studied the images.

I remember the first time I went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and saw a Kerry James Marshall painting with black bodies in it on a museum wall... It strengthened me on a cellular level.

I have seen Colonial churches since I was very small, Colonial painting and polychrome sculpture. And that was all I saw. There was not a single modern painting in any museum, not a Picasso, not a Braque, not a Chagall. The museums had Colombian painters from the eighteenth century and, of course, I saw Pre-Columbian art. That was my exposure.

Sometimes I'm kind of cranky coming to see something. I saw the Mona Lisa when it was in L.A., saw it for 13 seconds and had to move on.

I joined the Young Philanthropists Circle at the Musee Des Beaux Arts, we have little events every month where you learn about a different artist and you see the exhibit and you get an inside an inside look at the technique used.

Each year, tens of millions of museumgoers walk through the entrance of the Getty, or the Metropolitan or the Prado or the Hermitage, and never consider the possibility of having to arbitrate for themselves the authenticity of what they have come to see.

As far as I can tell the only thing worth looking at in most museums of art is all the schoolgirls on daytrips with the art departments.

The Louvre is the book in which we learn to read.

A visit to a museum is a search for beauty, truth, and meaning in our lives. Go to museums as often as you can.

Erudite and entertaining, Max Anderson is the perfect tour guide to the world of art. The Quality Instinct is both educational and enlightening from start to finish, the thinking person's guide to museums. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to truly understand what makes a masterpiece.