In Kansas City they took three penguins on a museum tour. They enjoyed Caravaggio. Here are the photos

Museums in the United States are still closed to people, but evidently they are not closed to animals: this is the case at the Nelson-Atkins Museum, one of America’s most important institutions, formed in the early 1900s thanks to donations from publisher William Rockhill Nelson and teacher Mary McAfee Atkins, who provided the financial endowment to build the museum and purchase the artworks. Today, the museum houses a very rich collection that features paintings by great Italian artists such as Caravaggio, Titian, Guercino, José de Ribera, and Alessandro Magnasco, works by the most important names in European painting (Rubens, Rembrandt, El Greco, Petrus Christus, Chardin), and a rich collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, from Monet to Degas, Pissarro to Van Gogh.

In fact, the museum came up with the idea of offering a visit to three penguins from the Kansas City Zoo: Bubbles, five years old, Maggie, seven, and Berkley, eight (the species, Humboldt penguins, widespread mainly on the coast of Chile, can live to be more than 30 years old). The three feathered ones explored the halls and seemed to enjoy the visit: they “reacted more to Caravaggio than to Monet,” assures museum director Julián Zugazagoitia, who also let it be known that he spoke to the penguins in Spanish to make them feel more at home. Indeed, in the video of the visit, the birds are seen scurrying quite fast in front of Monet’s water lilies, but they linger in front of Caravaggio’s St. John the Baptist.

“We are very happy to welcome some colleagues from the zoo, and they brought some friends with them ... and now let’s see how they behave in front of art,” Zugazagoitia added in the video. “At the Kansas City Zoo,” said Randy Wisthoff, zoo director, on the other hand, “we’re always thinking of ways to enrich and stimulate the lives of animals. And during this shutdown period, the animals really miss the visitors.” Again Wisthoff added that “we were glad we visited the museum, and the penguins really enjoyed it.”

In short, it cannot be said that there was not a single dog at the Nelson-Atkins Museum during the coronavirus shutdown: there were even three penguins. Below are some of the pictures taken by Gabe Hopkins, the museum’s photographer, as evidence of the special visit.

In Kansas City they took three penguins on a museum tour. They enjoyed Caravaggio. Here are the photos

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