Rules for Visiting the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Joanna Theiss

Standat least four feet away from the artwork. Use your inside voice. Hold in your thirst, your growing limbs, your longing for a snack-sized bag of Cheetos.

Gather around a painting of a milky princess in a tissue paper dress. Listen to the teacher say, Children, look at how lovely she is, how the artist has captured the light that strokes her shoulders, the carnations that bud on her cheeks.

Watch the teacher turn chiaroscuro when you point at the painting beside the princess, a ruder, harder, realer painting of a centaur gripping a lady by the ribs. This lady, she’s trapped, her gown is slipping from her rounded hips. This centaur, he’s winning, bucking off her chances at rescue. No one’s stroking that lady’s shoulders, no one’s planting flowers in her face.

Endure the teacher’s scolds that are crowded, outside-voiced. Come away from there, children, that’s not a nice painting, and you, you’re wrong, it’s not realistic, it can’t be, not with centaurs.

Don’t ask if the lady is realistic because you know that she is. She is the realest, universalist lady in the museum, in the world, the lady’s voiceless mouthing, the lady’s body belonging to the monster. She is all the milky ladies, the tissue paper girls.

Get away from there. Hold it all in.