b'3Ever since I was a little girl, I had the privilege of experiencing art museums and similar cultural institutions as frequently as a child may experience a playground. My first encounter with these institutions was at the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA). My mother brought me on a trip there for a special mom-daughter day. When I saw Monets 1908 Water Lilies I was captivated by it more than any toy. The way it was displayed as a circle with all sorts of colors, was so unlike the boring rectangles of the other paintings throughout the museum. When I turned sixteen, my parents divorced. The only good thing to come from their splitting up was that I got a car. Freedom. To escape from everything, I would get dressed up and visit my Monet. I would stand in front of it and feel like a little girl again, letting the world melt away from me and feel a little bit of calm before returning to the storm of4teenage hood. I ran away to Philadelphia for my freshman1year of college to be surrounded by culture and interesting people, things I was adamant that Dallas lacked. On my first night, I met Marc who also ran away from the south. We talked for hours the night we met, and he shared how he also would go to the main art museum in Atlanta alone as a 16-18 year-old. He suggested we explore the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) together, since we seemed to be the only two teens that enjoyed spending a day surrounded by art. We eventually visited the PMA together, and although we had very different tastes, he let me lead the way. When we stumbled into the room of Monets,Details from notebook, watercolor on paper, my breath caught as I stared at Railway Bridge atAllison Gaughan, 2022Argenteuil from 1873. I stood transfixed, taking inopposite:every detail. I commented how I liked the cloud- Figure 1: DMA Monetlike things which he pointed out would be theFigure 2: PMA Monetsteam from the train. I wasnt embarrassed by my mistake but stayed adamant that they wereThis page:cloud-steam hybrids. We stood there for what feltFigure 3: PMA Renoirlike eternity, I was staring at the painting, slowlyFigure 4: VMFA Historydeveloping my relationship with art, and my2 Figure 5: DMA Abduction 5TRENDS // PAGE 32PAGE 33 // TRENDS'