Test your focus. Can you stare at a painting for ten minutes?
A New York Times article a few weeks ago challenged readers to stare at something other than a Wordle puzzle for ten impossible minutes.
Well, I gave my ADHD brain a real workout this week at Lima’s MAC, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lima, about a twelve-minute walk from the couch on which my butt is parked.
Ten minutes doesn’t seem long unless you are holding your breath or staring at this.
Or this…
Or even this, whatever this is.
As hard as I tried, I couldn’t get look at a painting for more than two minutes. I would think about my laundry, my password for my Peruvian bank account, or if I’d order a chocolate croissant or avocado toast at the Muesum coffee shop.
The painting below did catch my eye. I saw a raw chicken in the lower left corner, a stop light wearing an umbrella for a hat, Shrek in the middle, a colorful CD-rom on an orange pirate’s crotch, and a few other things. But none of that caught my attention.
It was a chip in the painting, below the foot on the hot dog buns…or are they ribs? Funny, how with all of the vibrancy going on, my eyes were attracted to the nothingness.
But not for ten minutes.
The piece of art I looked at the longest was in the gift shop. It was a local mural in Lima which had been turned into a puzzle, a mural that I actually have seen in Miraflores near Kennedy Park. Being a puzzle junkie, I could look at this picture for a long, long, time.
If you visit Lima, the MAC is a fun visit with incredible views, about a thirty-minute walk on the Malecon from the LacoMar in Miraflores and on your way to other sites in Barranco.
