When I travel, I seek out museums. As a writer always in search of a quiet place where my laptop is welcome, museum cafés help me meet deadlines and recharge in ways coffeehouse clatter never could.
The atmosphere of a good museum café pulls me out of time and settles me in a world—my chair, stool or booth—literally surrounded by artistic inspiration. Masterpieces a glance away, these settling-in spots are elevated musing favorites for any number of reasons: They are sure to be more subdued than the average coffee shop; the people-watching is stellar; and there’s a hum in the atmosphere that inspires some of my best thinking.
Why it took me decades of courting the creativity muse in distant cafés only to discover I could have coffee with her in my hometown of Fort Worth, I do not know. I do remember the moment it occurred to me that I had too long overlooked such a prime location for contemplation. Just before Christmas one year, I stopped at the Kimbell Art Museum for a gift shop run. I plodded up the broad limestone steps to the gallery level, overwhelmed by obligations, my head full of deadlines.
Drawn into the light that fills Louis I. Kahn’s vaulted masterpiece, I headed straight for the Kimbell Café. From my seat I could see Aristide Maillol’s L’Air, a bronze female figure, floating in a courtyard. European masterworks beckoned from across the corridor. Immediately I was transported. That’s the other bonus that comes from stopping into a hometown museum: There is a sense of excitement that I associate with travel. Without planes or trains, I can step out of the workaday world and feel I am on a journey—even when I’m less than a mile from home.
Seated beneath fragments of a sixth-century mosaic, cupping my warm coffee mug, I realized I was steps away from Michelangelo’s first known painting. And just like that, I lay my burdens down.
Now I return regularly to the Kimbell’s café for creative therapy. I can energize myself in 10 minutes or 20, view one painting or a dozen, before or after my coffee. Or I can simply sit quietly. No entrance fee and no passport required.
And while the soup-and-sandwich lunch options are dependably tasty, a post-pandemic offering of an afternoon tea service takes me to happy memories served up abroad. It also offers up my favorite sort of nibbling—scones with housemade jam, finger sandwiches, cookies—and because it’s served as “tea for two,” I’m sometimes inspired to share with a friend.
That is, of course, when I’m not meeting my muse.
