This past summer, I waited in line for three hours to see arguably one of the most famous sculptures in the world. The first hour was blisteringly hot. The second, it monsooned. During the third, a creepy man tried to hit on me as I pointedly ignored him by rereading the terrible book I had already finished on the train ride there. I began to debate whether it was even worth it to stay in line. But I did, perhaps due to the sunk-cost fallacy; or maybe I just felt particularly stubborn that day — I had made a point of visiting the most important art museums in every city I traveled to, so why stop now? Unfortunately, that mindset did not serve me well, because when I finally got inside the museum, I was soaking wet and deeply frustrated.
And I suppose some of that annoyance carried over, because as I looked 16 feet up in the air at the face of Michaelangelo’s David, the only thing I felt was disappointment.
“It’s literally just tall,” I texted my dad, halfway through my third trip around the statue, hoping that looking at it from different angles would unlock that aha moment for me. He, along with pretty much everyone else in my life, had been telling me for weeks that I couldn’t leave Italy without seeing the Renaissance masterpiece. It was a marvel: so lifelike and yet fantastically exaggerated. It represented the artistic culture of Florence, the city I so loved and admired for all its artistic masterpieces. Replicas could be found all throughout the city on magnets, tote bags, postcards and T-shirts. …