A Museum Dose of Awe

Here in DC, like everywhere else in the country, it’s very tense in these days leading up to the elections. So I was happy for the distraction this Saturday of attending an interactive workshop on Finding Awe at the National Gallery of Art.

Just entering the historic West Wing, I was immediately dwarfed by the grand, black-marble-columned rotunda. Then joining the group in an intimate gallery of wood-paneled walls lined with exquisite 17^th century Dutch still lives, my focus shifted to the miniature, and I was left feeling like Alice in Wonderland nibbling the different sides of the mushroom…

The workshop was offered as part of a research collaboration between the National Gallery and Ducher Keltner, a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.

Awe, the workshop handout explained, “is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast and mysterious that transcends your current understanding of the world.”  And if awe is good for our minds and bodies, and can even help us find our sense of humanity, as the handout suggested, then “awe practices” are clearly something worth cultivating.

We were invited to contemplate an installation by contemporary artist Dario Robleto, an aquarium-like case enclosing a collection of luminous slices of nautilus shells, embellished and balanced over meticulously composed miniature platters of sea life under radiant Plexiglas domes. As masterful and exquisite as the surrounding still-lives, the effect was awe-inspiring indeed!

After the workshop, postcards were handed out with tips for how to cultivate awe. Not surprisingly, altering one’s consciousness with psychedelics did not appear on the list.  And yet, for some, that may be one of the most reliable means to move aside the veil and catch a glimpse into the mystery.

For my book, I am now deep into the process of interviewing older adults about their psychedelic experiences. Many of the accounts echo my own observation, that once your heart has been expanded in awe with these medicines, that state becomes much more accessible in everyday life.

If all this is too much information for the National Gallery, I totally understand. Maybe one day Professor Keltner, who is also associated with the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics, might explain to his collaborators about the concept of the “museum dose”.