Today’s post is a photo story in 3 museum exhibitions.

1. Alice Neel: People Come First

2. James Turrell, Three Gems

3. Guo Pei: Couture Fantasy

It’s been a long time since I’ve spent a whole day in an art museum, and I came away with the fuzzy-headed feeling of having soaked up thought-provoking and visually interesting material all day long.

My museum visits on this trip have been reminders that I do still love these places, and that they make me think. Think critically and disappointedly and aspirationally and fondly and many more adverbs besides. But I’m not done with them, in either a personal or a professional sense.

I finally made it to the Museum of Jurassic Technology. I won’t say anything to spoil it, but I will say that it’s by turns charming and weird and lovely and eerie and macabre and funny and thought-provoking. It makes you question what museums are for and histories of display and how you “know” something is authentic and what even is the concept of authenticity, anyway.

I’ve bid my darling friends farewell and camped in Joshua Tree National Park and avoided all information about the Oscars until the flood of text messages that came in today when I came back out of the park.

Some highlights and thoughts from the past two days.

The social side of my brain and my heart feel a little bit like those first few crocuses that peek their heads up out of the ground when there’s still some snow lying around and nothing is yet green. I’m hopeful for a verdant season ahead of seeing how these interpersonal pathways re-grow.

The kids are all right. And I’m hopeful that museums—the ones that are Doing The Work of acknowledging the good, the bad, and the responsibility of their role in society—may be all right too.

If museums like this can be out there doing the good work and the next generation of professionals can be out there choosing to confront true histories, even—especially—when they’re ugly, then maybe there’s hope for this field, yet.

An interdepartmental team of curators and educators came together to brainstorm ideas for how to take action in response, and after some discussion, we decided to focus in on this section: “Always be just as ready to listen as you are emboldened to speak out for or against others.”