Don't go to a museum with a destination. Museums are wormholes to other worlds. They are ecstasy machines. - Jerry Saltz

At the same time, art cannot be understood in terms of purpose. As the sculptor Charles Ray has said, art is “for absolutely nothing.” To make, or experience, art is to enter a kind of free zone; it slows us down, places us in some epistemological estuary, takes us into the wild. We make art from our flaws, fragilities, perversities, from our need to communicate or be entertained or stave off death, to create our own mating dances, to deliver our own children, to mourn. Art is bigger than mere subject matter. It is as big as life.

That day, as I contemplated the Medusa, I felt the shattering heartbreak of a long-forgotten memory. My mind carried me back to a moment when I was ten years old, left by my mother to wander alone in the Art Institute of Chicago, scared and confused, until a small colorful diptych by Giovanni di Paolo beckoned to me from across a gallery. A portal opened. A month later, my mother committed suicide. The portal slammed shut. I never looked at art again. Until I did. —

Every work of art is a culturescape of you, your memories, the moments you spent working, your hopes, energies, and neuroses, the times you live in, and your ambitions. Of the things that are engaging, mysterious, meaningful, resistant over time.