This post has been updated, look below!

I just got back from my trip last night. It was a much needed تغيير جو and it was just perfect in terms of time, not too short and not too long.

There were many things worth posting about during the trip, but I will start out with what I think was the most interesting topic. My wife and I visited the Tate Modern, which is a national gallery of international modern art. The place is incredible! With more than 22 million visitors in five years only, it has become the most popular modern art museum in the world and last year surpassed the British museum as the most popular museum in London.

Anyway, we went there to check it out as well as the Frida Kahlo exhibition going on till October. I have not seen the movie Frida, and have read very little about her, but I remember watching a program about her once.

The exhibition was beautiful! They show 80 works of art by her as well as tell you her life story as you go on to know what period of her life she painted a specific painting. If you are visiting London and will be there until 9th of October, it is definitely worth a visit! She has become one of my favorite artists overnight, and I think I will check out the movie.

Well, other than the fact that the exhibition was excellent, what surprised me was the number of visitors! We literally had to wait in line for every painting! There were hundreds of visitors at the time we were there. Just walking within the gallery took forever because of the crowds. It took us around 3 hours to finish the exhibition, which consists of about 11 rooms.

The crowd there was an excellent mix of young people, old people, couples, families, asians, americans, africans, people on wheelchairs, punks, nerds….and so on. Every kind of person could be found there! And the exhibition, unlike the museum, was not free! You had to pay for an admission ticket, still, the place was packed! I especially loved seeing a family where the mother would explain the art work for her children who were 7 or 8 yrs old!

I have been to the Museum of Modern Art here in Kuwait four times. I have yet to see another visitor while I was there! The place is huge, and is in a great location, and in four times, I have seen 1 other person, who turned out to work there!

The problem is not with our museum, its with our culture.

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Tuesday, September 13th UPDATE -

For everyone who hasn’t heard of the Museum of Modern Arts in Kuwait, and wants to know the location, please check out this great post with lots of very nice pictures of the place too.