Museum postcards

A few years ago, I hit upon this idea of telling a story through a series of postcards. It all started with a series I sent to my nieces in December of 2021, telling the story (from my perspective) of a road trip my family had taken in the summer of 1976. Since then, I have sent over 400 postcards to friends and family, usually in dedicated series. Most of these series have either been about this photographer and postcard peddler from the postwar period whom I discovered named Ernest Ferguson or about Vincent van Gogh and my theory of The Starry Night. 

While I originally shopped for postcards at local indoor flea markets, I eventually moved to eBay. But there are a few Van Gogh postcards that I am always hoping to find on the auction site that unfortunately rarely if ever show up for sale. Finally, I got the bright idea to order the cards from the museums themselves. 

But museums don’t sell postcards online. I assume it’s just not worth it to them. So I decided to try a fun little experiment and send twenty dollars cash to various museums and see who would respond. (I should mention that when it comes to postcards of paintings, I’m a bit of a snob, or a purist, in that I only want the official postcards printed by the museums that own the works.) Obviously, sending cash in the mail is a bit of a crap shoot, but that’s part of the fun of it. And after all, it’s only twenty bucks.

First, on August 17, 2024, I sent requests to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Indianapolis Museum of Art for two of my favorite paintings by Van Gogh, Rain and Landscape at Saint-Rémy (Enclosed Field with Peasant), respectively, the latter of which is integral to my Starry Night theory. Indy came in quickly, in less than two weeks. I didn’t hear from Philly.

I didn’t know how much museum postcards were going for these days. I figured twenty bucks would get me maybe five, allowing for shipping and handling. I got 15 postcards from Indianapolis! I had wanted the cards originally for any future Starry Night series I might send to people, but when I got fifteen, I decided to turn this into a sort of performance art piece and send them to my core group of friends and family who had been receiving postcard series over the past few years, nine in all. Here is the first card, front and back, with a transcript of the text I wrote, telling my friends about the project.

Click on images to enlarge them.

“Museums don’t sell postcards online. So I mailed a $20 bill to the Indianapolis Museum of Art and asked them to please send me as many postcards of this ptg. as 20 bucks would buy, minus postage. I figured with inflation they’d be, like, 3 dollars each and I’d get maybe 5. ¶ I got 15!”

On August 26, I sent a twenty dollar bill to the Cincinnati Art Museum for postcards of one of my all-time favorite Van Goghs, Undergrowth with Two Figures. They responded within two weeks as well. Here is the postcard and my text.

“I also sent the Cincinnati Art Museum 20 bucks for postcards of this painting, and they sent me 9! ¶ This is one of my all-time favorite ptgs. by Van Gogh. I’ve only ever seen it on regular (continental) sized postcards (with lots of white space top and bottom). But given its odd dimensions (50 x 100 cm; Vincent actually used this size a bunch in the last months of his life, in Auvers; before that his preferred size was 73 x 92) anyway, I’ve always felt that this wide format would lend itself perfectly to an oversized card, and obviously so did they! (It is slightly cropped top and bottom, hence ‘detail’.)”

I got the feeling that the people in the museum shops in the heartland cities of Indianapolis and Cincinnati were open to my project, while the hard-boiled east coast Philadelphians were, like, “Thanks for lunch, hayseed!” So, I sent Philadelphia another request, on September 11, saying that if they had already sent my previous request (which I was pretty sure they hadn’t) to just send me an assortment of other major works in their collection. A week later, I actually got the first batch I had requested, a month after the initial request. Given the postmark, they had obviously mailed these before they got my second request. They had just taken their time with the first request. Here's the postcard and my text.

“Obviously, I was taking a chance sending cash in the mail. Indy and Cincy responded promptly, within 2 weeks. But after 4 weeks I figured Philly had pocketed the cash, making an example of a naïve Southerner. ¶ A few days after I’d sent them another request with another $20 bill—offering them a 2d chance to do the right thing—the original request came in! 15 of these cards! ¶ Maybe they had been temporarily out.”

A couple of weeks later I got the assortment of highlights from Philly and mailed these individually to the group, based on their personalities. 

This was August and September. In October, I initiated a Phase Two of the project. I started by sending a twenty to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), requesting the postcard of their prize Rothko, which was the first in my Regarding series of “art” photographs. (I actually mailed this request on September 30.) Then, on October 8, I sent a third request to Philly for a selection from the highlights they had previously sent. Since I now knew how much the postcards and the shipping costs were (they had sent receipts with the previous batches), I mailed them a check this time, figuring they couldn’t pocket this. Nothing! And according to my bank statements, they haven’t cashed the check.

Also on the eighth, I sent a twenty to the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), asking for the postcard of another painting in the Regarding series, Jackson Pollock’s One. A week later, I sent another twenty to MoMA for The Starry Night. On that same day I sent a twenty to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for Van Gogh’s Irises. 

The Met sent the cash back with a note saying that they could not fulfil an order in this manner. I briefly thought about writing them back and telling them that their wholesome counterparts in the Midwest had fulfilled my request, even the cretins in Philadelphia had, and that in the time that it took them to send me the note they could have fulfilled the order. But I thought better of it.

Otherwise, I didn’t hear from any of the others! If these had been the first museums I had written to, in Phase One, this project probably would have never happened. 

Over a month after I sent the first MoMA requests, I did the same thing I had done with Philly, sending another twenty asking for The Starry Night again and saying that if they had already fulfilled my previous requests to just send me an assortment of their greatest hits. This was on November 23, and then, on December 14, I received the first two orders! Which means that this time, unlike Philly, they probably got my third request before they finally mailed the first two. I imagine a different associate or a manager at the MoMA Store opening this third request and asking the staff what previous requests I was referring to—and the culprit secretly going back and filling those requests.

The first two orders, you will recall, were for The Starry Night and Pollock’s One, and they fulfilled them together. Unfortunately, MoMA’s postcard prices are higher than the other museums (some of which gave me a volume discount) and so I only received nine of each of these postcards, and there are nine people on my mailing list for this project, which meant that there would be no cards left over for me, especially The Starry Night. So, some people got The Starry Night and some people got the Pollock, which kind of worked out because some people had already gotten a Starry Night postcard from me in the past.

They even gave me change!

"MoMA finally came in! But only after I mailed them a third request—two months after the first two! ¶ I think I sent them on a guilt trip!" At the bottom of the Pollock cards I wrote, "This is the painting in the Regarding series." At the bottom of the Starry Night cards, I wrote, "The brightest 'star' is actually Venus.©" This phrase is actually not copyrighted, but it is one of my taglines and it should be.

Oddly, I have never received the third MoMA request. And I’m still waiting for the third Philly request.

Miraculously, on Christmas Eve, I finally received the Rothko cards from SFMOMA, three months after the original request!

"I sent 20 bucks to SFMOMA on Sept. 30, and they came in on Christmas Eve! ¶ This is the first painting in the Regarding series."