A Museum with a Sense of Humor

We just returned from a 12-night trip that took us to Vienna and Salzburg, Austria as well as Madrid. As usual, we will have several posts about our trip, but we wanted to start with a story about an art exhibit in Vienna.

We saw a lot of art on this trip, including several special exhibitions. Our first museum visit was to the Kunst Historisches Museum in Vienna to see an exhibit focused on works by Caravaggio and Bernini. The museum itself is an amazingly ornate building with art everywhere:

But, what really shocked us, was what we saw even before we entered the exhibit:

Shana and I are not very big fans of selfies, and to us this was really appalling. The museum was providing a place to take a selfie in front of one of the paintings featured in the exhibit. Now, anyone who is an expert in Greek mythology (or art) may already see the punchline of the story, but for those, like us, who don't get it yet, let me explain how we figured it out.

We entered the exhibit and began looking at the art. The second piece was the one from the "selfie point" outside. It turned out that the painting was a Caravaggio from 1600 of Narcissus! Now, for those of you who don't know, Narcissus is a Greek myth about a beautiful young hunter. While there are several versions of the story, the one represented here is Narcissus, cursed by the goddess Nemesis (whose advances he had rejected) into falling in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Having fallen in love with himself, he cannot pull himself away from his reflection and eventually he dies there. Of course, our modern words narcissist and narcissism come from this myth.

After learning these details, Shana and I could only conclude that this was a fantastic joke by the curators of the exhibit: a "selfie point" that encourages people to take pictures in front of a painting of Narcissus. Classic! Of course, once we understood the joke, Shana and I could not resist:

 (Yes, since we don't take many selfies, we are really bad at it).

Much more to come soon.

Hasta pronto,

Jeff and Shana