Loss Leader?

I just recently learned what this phrase means. An example is kind of like this; a supermarket could put milk or bread on sale at a price so cheap they might lose money but they get a lot of people walk into the store that week. I think good museums do something like that too. They publicize a special exhibit to get you in the door.

I yesterday I met with my daughter to the Brooklyn Museum, where the main attraction was the sneaker exhibit. She stopped this photo of me smiling in front of the Adidas Marathon. An issue I attempted to run the 1980 NYC Marathon in. (You probably haven't read that story but here it is,)

 here I am choosing it up in front of the original Air Jordan.  I bought them, new at some giant sporting goods store when they were more down. I wanted a hightop shoe to hike through the Rockies, the American desert in the Alps. By the end of that summer those shoes disintegrated and I threw them away. The exact model I had is currently listed on eBay for $8500

There was also an exhibit about arcade games, reconfigured for Brooklyn. To the left is a picture of my daughter playing a video game where the goal is to parallel park









These special exhibits were cute, and they do attract a lot of visitors. But the fact that I got into the door got me to look at one painting that I really related to.

To the left is Two Ivans and Oksana. The descr takes iption in shot an eye and willd of the painting was extremely educational  "In 1934 the Communist Party established Socialist Realism as the official art form of the Soviet Union. Painters and sculptors working for the state created portrayals of the myth of the Communist utopia in a heroic academic style. In 1964 Viola Pushkarova, a recent graduate of the state-run Kharkiv Art Institute in modern Ukraine, painted this didactic scene of Soviet domestic life, in which an attractive youth rests his head after working hard to feed his family and complete his studies. The calendar on the wall reads “9” (May 9), a national holiday marking the capitulation of Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union and the Allied forces in World War II.

ARTIST Viola Pushkarova, Ukrainian, 1929-2010

MEDIUM Oil on canvas

DATES 1964

I gave my daughter a chance to look at the mummies that she's seen on more than a few class trips and I sat across from his painting for about 20 minutes. It really struck a chord with me. When my twins would just that age I had pushed him around that museum. If I would've noticed that painting then I would've sat in a chair and fall asleep like that man. Also, it was painted in 1964. In that year I would've been as old as those little babies. It is in a and will will will and in a and now he and in my and he is in and in all will you and I and I and he and I will will will and

So I'm never gonna be the guy who says everything happens for a reason. But I was the guy needed to rest for 15 minutes and found a good spot to do it. So maybe I'll take my son to the museum  and let him bang on the video games and I'll find another object to discover.