The Nelson-Atkins Museum Is Still Closed for Humans, But Three Sophisticated Penguins Just Got a Private Tour (and the Photos Are Adorable)

As museums started to shutter
across the world, many were forced to cancel or postpone their
black-tie galas. But one midwestern museum still managed to attract
a few tuxedoed visitors this week. 

A trio of
penguins—Bubbles (age 5),
Maggie (7), and Berkley (8)—from the Kansas City Zoo took a field trip
across town to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art this week to take in
a little culture sans humans.

The penguins, it turns out, had
some hot takes. “They
seemed to react much better to Caravaggio than Monet,” noted Julián
Zugazagoitia, executive director and CEO of the museum, in a video
of the tour posted online yesterday.

The three Humboldt penguins are native to the coastal
areas of Peru and Chile and can live well into their 30s, according
to the zoo. Zugazagoitia says he and other hosts at the museum
spoke some Spanish to make them feel at home. 

“Unfortunately, our penguins
can’t speak for themselves,” a representative from the zoo told
Artnet News when asked if the animals would like to comment, “but
we think they found the experience at the museum very
enriching!” 

“The penguins absolutely loved
it,” added Randy Wisthoff, executive director of the zoo, in the
video, noting that the animals “miss having visitors come out and
see them.”

So far, the internet is going
wild for the penguins. The video already has nearly 723,000 views
on the museum’s Facebook page, and nearly 100,000 more across
Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube.

And the museum also brought its staff photographer
along for the trip—see some more penguin pics below.

The post The Nelson-Atkins Museum Is Still Closed for
Humans, But Three Sophisticated Penguins Just Got a Private Tour
(and the Photos Are Adorable) appeared first on artnet
News.