Achi news desk-
This is part of a collection of stories celebrating the many shapes that retirement travel can take. Read more here.
When I was growing up, my parents traveled the world working in the art world. My mother, Lynn Zelevansky, now 76, spent her career as a contemporary curator and museum director, focusing outside the classical New York and European fields of that time on artists from South Korea, Mexico, and beyond. My father, Paul Zelevansky, 77, a visual artist and teacher, traveled with her as often as he could, absorbing every culture like a sponge. When my mother was curating a huge installation – built from church candles and cow bones – by Brazilian conceptual artist Cildo Meireles at MoMA, for example, feijoada brunches became the norm in our household. When my parents traveled back and forth to Tokyo as she organized the Yayoi Kusama retrospective at LACMA, Japanese techno became our daily soundtrack.
When my mother retired from working full time in institutions and my father stopped teaching, I wondered what they could do.
Keep traveling – that’s it.
Their adventures have remained as predictable as their ubiquitous black wardrobe, whether they’re hitting the Venice Biennale every fall without fail, touring Spain’s Basque Country after opening for a show Ad Reinhardt in Madrid, or meeting art world friends in Vietnam a talk on minimalism, given by my mother, in Singapore.
Attracted by a sense of fascination, community, social connection, and a multi-layered cultural experience, a growing circle of retirees (and semi-retirees) are spending their new leisure time criss-crossing the globe from Berlin to Morocco to Mexico City in pursuit art, attending busy art fairs, lavish parties, intimate artist studio visits, private gallery tours, and museum openings, not only to see and buy art, but also to connect and stay motivated while immersing in beauty. “The art world really is a global community,” says my mother.
Because the artistic field is a social network and an industry, people of retirement age who travel for art are former insiders and hobbyists. “The social element of the art world is very central to what it is,” says Paul. “And so you go to these events to meet people, reconnect, make new connections.”
J. Patrice Marandel, 79, a Frenchman with an infectious smile, missed the ease of that social and professional overlap as well as the almost constant travel for work when he retired from being chief curator of European painting at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. after twenty-three years in 2017. “I used to say Frankfurt airport was my real residence because I changed planes there so often,” he jokes. “After I retired, there were fewer opportunities to see the people who are more friends than colleagues.”
The only solution was to continue traveling in art circles, sometimes as a consultant to individuals and private institutions, and otherwise for pure enjoyment. As a retiree, he is free to pursue his own passions, jet setting for the recent Frans Hals (Dutch Golden Age painter) exhibition in London, to see shows of French painting from the 17th and 18th century in France, and to explore a newer interest. in Islamic art (inspired by long ago travels to countries including Afghanistan). “Before, my journey was based on what I was going to achieve and bring home,” he said. “Now, it’s all about my pleasure.”
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