Existing in an area
Recently, when I visit the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, I’ll often decide where to go based on the spaces instead of the art those spaces contain. I’ll go to gallery 241a, a period room from Hamilton Palace in Scotland, or gallery 218, a small church-like space with a stained glass window, because I like the way they’re lit, or they way they sound, or the way they’re shaped. I’ll go see the ancient coins in gallery 212c because I like the way they’ve organized the space with sliding drawers—and then I won’t open the drawers to look at the coins.
In fact, I’ll barely process anything that’s on display during these visits. On some occasions I’ve sat outside in Calderwood Courtyard and looked at the ivy-covered walls for longer than I spent at the actual exhibits. Maybe this all suggests some latent fascination with architecture or museum planning that I’ve never pursued, but I think of it as wanting to focus on the aura of a museum more than its actual contents. “The medium is the message” but for places, maybe.
I thought about this new behavior of mine while at the final XOXO Festival, held last week in Portland. I’ve been lucky enough to go to all eight iterations of XOXO, and on this trip I felt the main appeal for me was simply being there. When asked who I was excited to see while making small talk with other attendees, I didn’t have a ready answer; in fact, I never even internalized the lineup. Part of that was trust in the organizers, who have always done an excellent job with curation, but another part was that I realized it did not matter to me anymore: I wanted to be at XOXO more than I wanted to see anything in particular.
(I should note that none of this is a criticism of the programming. If anything, I thought 2024 was one of the stronger XOXOs! The festival was shorter this year, which may have helped—with fewer speakers and presenters, perhaps they were able to be choosier. I enjoyed everything I saw there; I’m just navel-gazing about my own reactions.)
I’ve only ever been to Portland during XOXO, so this year I got into town early to do the tourist things I typically have to either forego entirely or carefully squeeze in around the edges of the festival: street fairs, rose gardens, Powell’s, Forest Park, Pittock Mansion, the arboretum, that sort of thing. Mainly, though, I was excited to spend more time at the Portland Japanese Garden.
In my experience the worst thing about the Japanese Garden is that it’s too good—its popularity means the crowds can prevent the sort of reflective, meditative experience it wants to provide. I bought an annual membership so I could visit during the quieter early-morning member hours, and spent so much time there that it’s already paid for itself. Going there, doing nothing in particular in a space designed for exactly that, was a highlight of my trip.