The one thing I take from every museum

What do you take with you after visiting a museum or gallery?

A memory, perhaps. A good experience, an impression. Sure, you snapped a few pictures, which later you will post on your social media, where your not-art-interested friends will be impressed and believe you are the art expert.

Jokes aside, one week after that visit, what actually stays in your head and memory?

The images still exist in your mobile phone, but how often do you go back to them, search for them, or get inspired by them?

I was in that situation too. Until I decided to take a different path.

I started to collect postcards.

Yes, those overpriced postcards from the gift shop at the end of a well-designed, retail-minded maze that leads you gently to your wallet, or your mobile phone to tap that NFC reader.

But my intention is different.

I don’t buy just any postcard. I try to find a piece of art that truly speaks to me, something that captures what I felt the first moment I laid my eyes on it. It could be an imagination of a lost memory, a shared laughter, or a real admiration of the artwork. That one thing makes me appreciate the effort of visiting the place and turns the experience into something memorable.

I then try to see if they sell a postcard of that exact artwork.

Sometimes I find it. Many times, I don’t.

In those moments, I look for a postcard that summarizes the experience, or at least relates to my visit.

This has become a very interesting practice. Looking back, I realized I wasn't the only one thinking this way.

In How to Visit an Art Museum, Johan Idema refers to postcards from museum stores as “They extend your art experience, allowing you to digest it and, finally, remember it fondly. Consider souvenirs your future memories.” Perhaps that is why, years later, I can still look at a postcard and instantly find myself back in a particular gallery, standing in front of a piece that spoke to me.

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I even do it in random gift shops or makers markets. It feels like I carry a small piece of that art with me, especially when it’s tied to a memory, or when it spoke to me in a certain way.

When I look back at my postcard collection, it feels like walking through a mini art exhibition of my own. Different eras, styles, artists, and media, all living side by side. Nothing really connects them, except the memories they carry. And somehow, without planning it, I became the curator of something quietly special.

So, what do you take with you after visiting museums or galleries?

I’m curious to hear your thoughts, and whether you, too, find something meaningful in these postcards.

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