Standing at MoMA, in front of Van Gogh’s icon painting The Starry Night, and the person to my right is trying to position himself so as to take the perfect selfie, his head framed just so against a backdrop of beauty and intrigue. Click. Done. On to the next selfie, with a Picasso. He did not, for one moment, stop and look at the painting. He did not stand in awe of the beauty and mystery. The painting was only a backdrop for his self-portrait. As an introverted thinker, I do not get ‘selfies’. As a lover of art seeing The Starry Night for the first time in person, I get selfies even less.

I wish there were cellphone-free zones (like museums and grocery stores, maybe just on Wednesdays) so that people could just focus on the one thing that lies before them.