It was my last morning in Minneapolis – and the weather had reverted to the dismal trappings of the winter. Cold, brisk air rushed along on cutting winds, and the sky – so recently blue and filled with the sun – had turned gray, revealing not one clue as to the whereabouts of the central orb of our solar system. Faced with the prospect of an entire day to fill before my flight boarded, I stored my luggage and made the journey to the Walker Arts Center. There were happy memories there.

The walk back was decidedly less colorful than the one through the sculpture garden a few short days prior. While the land had been just as brown and barren then, there had at least been a very blue sky, and a shimmering sun, both of which eluded me now. The day felt like winter – a rather disappointing dirge at this stage of April – and an aspect of sadness on this day of departure could not be shaken.

But there was color, even – and perhaps especially – in the gift shop. For some reason, photos culled from museum shops always turn out better than the actual photos of what’s in the museum itself. Part of it is due to accessibility and the nearness of the objects at hand. No one cares, or minds, if you touch and grope what’s in the gift shop. Such is not the case with those velvet-rope scenes.

Part of it is also due to the nature of the art on display. It really is meant to be seen in person. That’s the only way to accurately gauge the scale and color of a painting, or the shadows and light of a sculpture. When captured in a photograph, a little, and often a lot, is lost – as if the real artwork would never deign to be displayed any other way than its creator intended. For that reason, I don’t tend to post all the photos I take of the works that move me.

The whimsical inhabitants of a gift shop are another story. Their displays cry out to be photographed, sassy little show-peeps begging to be noticed. For that reason alone, I usually indulge them. Often the objects will relate to the featured exhibits or artists, but sometimes they stand alone.

Waving goodbye to the Walker Arts Center, I pause in its doorway as they leave a happy last-look.

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts provided a second day of gallery stimulation, or in this case relaxation, as any encounter with Buddhist art immediately sets my mind at ease. Rather than bore you with my recollections, here’s an eclectic selection of photos that tell their own tale.

The Walker Art Center was staging an Edward Hopper exhibit during my time in Minneapolis, and as art galleries have customarily been places of peace, I made the sojourn into its modern angular walls, examining all the treats along the way. Like the portal seen below, which reminded me of a scene in ‘Beetlejuice’ (my life can be broken down into scenes from ‘Beetlejuice’, ‘The Goonies’ and ‘Auntie Mame’, with doses of ‘Sunset Boulevard‘ and ‘All About Eve’ for good measure).

An art gallery is more than just art – at least for me. The space in-between the art is just as important, if not more-so, than the art itself. Without those blank stretches, the neutral canvass against which the work can be seen and shown off to best advantage, there is the possibility of all being lost in a mess.

In this modern space, there was room to breathe. High ceilings, lots of natural light, and a few banks of white leather couches provided a buffer between galleries. I sat down and took a few deep breaths. In such austerity, and in the simple act of sitting down after all the walking and standing, I felt a calm creep into the day.

The afternoon had broken. Not in the way a mirror breaks – not all shards and sharpness and slivers of glass – but in the gentle turn following the morning, the subtle slant of the sun in the sky, that start to the onslaught of evening.

As for Mr. Hopper, I enjoyed his depictions of office workers best, caught at the end of their day, the sun mimicking what it was doing outside – slanting low in the sky. It reminded me that back home there was a new job on the horizon, but somehow I felt comfort in that too. It was a reminder that I wasn’t alone.

That may be what I look for most in a work of art – the ability to remind us that we are not alone. Not always. On that day at the Walker Art Center, I didn’t feel alone either.