Few spaces are as meditative and restorative as a museum when it is empty and when you can be alone with the art.
First, the quiet church-like setting, one unbesmirched by others or their phones.
Second, the time you can take looking at a work, uninterrupted. No one cuts in front of you. You can return to a work you like. You are free to take in, and find, the brush work or the composition however you will, however it calls you.
And then there is the ghost of the artist’s effort. After all, even if you spend all day you will still ignore most of what’s there, walking by masterpiece after masterpiece. Were you to choose one piece and stay in front of it for a week you would still only give it a fraction of the attention and effort the artist did creating it. You wear their glasses but see less far, or less long, before moving on to to try another view.
A museum is, on the one hand, a repository of genius and, on the other, a testament to how we (mostly) do not let genius—and solace, and quiet, and depth—reach us.
But if you get there early, and can be alone with the spirits of the makers, an empty museum helps you lessen that gap. Or, at least, you can feel the pleasure of what haunts you.
Best last line ever.