A Gallery Afternoon

Zara blazer (similar)
Oak + Fort top (similar)
Wilfred skirt (similar)
Flattered boots (similar)
Louis Vuitton handbag
Zara sunglasses (similar)
Stella & Dot ring
Maris Pearl Co. earrings (similar)
Location: Winnipeg Art Gallery – Winnipeg, Manitoba

We visited the Winnipeg Art Gallery in early September. It was the first time we’d done anything normal, aside from eating on a restaurant patio, since the beginning of the pandemic. The experience of spending an afternoon wandering the gallery corridors, looking at paintings and sculptures, was familiar. But at the same time, it was nothing like the last time we went to an art gallery – which, by the way, was in February, when we were in Chicago. We needed advance tickets which allowed us entry at a specific time. The actual entry process was a game of ping pong, bouncing from hand sanitizer to the contact tracing form to hand sanitizer and back again until all the steps were done.

Masks were required. The Art Gallery staff did everything right, really – the effort made for safety was clear in the uncrowded, frequently cleaned space. But it still felt uncomfortable, risky even, to spend so much time indoors with strangers. So we spent most of our visit at the rooftop sculpture garden, which is an outdoor space only accessible when the weather is warm.

It was a beautiful, sunny fall day. We basked in the warmth while we wandered among the sculptures. There was a food cart set-up, and Ian enjoyed a very fancy hot dog. But it was still odd to be there, odd to do something that felt so normal but at once was so abnormal and not at all like it would have been only a few months ago. It’s days, and experiences, like the one we had at the art gallery that make me wonder if it will actually be harder to readjust to normal life without masks and the comforting theatrics of constant sanitization than it was to adjust to the cautious way we live now.

I don’t know. And I’m not likely to come up with an answer until the time for that readjustment finally comes. But I’m hopeful that the sense of overwhelming gratitude I’ll feel at getting a sense of normalcy back will override everything else when that day eventually, finally comes.

In the meantime, we’re now living at the Canadian epicentre of the pandemic. Which means art gallery visits are entirely out of the question. And so is basically… anything else that involves people outside of immediate family, aside from grocery shopping. It’s been a long year, and it’s going to be an even longer winter. So I’m glad, if nothing else, that we got one more gallery visit in before it became impossible again.

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