Museums Are Taking to Twitter to Give Everyone a Moment of Zen

It’s probably safe to assume that most of us are feeling far from relaxed right now. Toilet paper shortages, officials issuing shelter-in-place orders, and the daily news cycle in general is ramping up blood pressure like nobody’s business. In an attempt to bring people down from their cliff of anxiety, museums worldwide are sharing art images on social media with the hashtag #MuseumMomentOfZen. And honestly, scrolling through these pics is truly helping to normalize the public’s heart rate.

The trend appears to have started with the Museum of the City of New York’s Twitter account. On March 11, MCNY tweeted out a picture of Herbert Bolivar Tschudy’s 1920 painting titled “The Turtle Tank” with the caption, “We know there’s a lot of stressful news in your timeline, so here’s a #MuseumMomentofZen.”

Other museums around the world took note of MCNY’s tweet and began sharing pieces of art from their own collections using the hashtag.

The Corning Museum of Glass shared this Tiffany piece from the early 1900s. And the Chicago History Museum responded with a photo of Florence Kilvary holding a miniature potted plant at the University of Chicago in 1917.

And the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City gave us a peek into its “shrine room,” “a place to set intentions and center the mind and body,” as the museum wrote. Social distancing in that room would be awesome.

From there, the hashtag began trending amongst the museum community. And Twitter became more like a virtual gallery than a social media platform.

This cow corner *might* be the best #MuseumMomentOfZen post on the site. But that’s entirely subjective.

Take a scroll through the #MuseumMomentOfZen hashtag to check out all the goodness currently housed in museums around the world. Some museums are even uploading virtual tours that you can take while sitting at home, as well. 

Not only are we feeling more at peace, but our to-visit bucket list has grown about three feet longer.