Curator John Coffey’s remarks on the cell phone tour make the house in Andrew Newell Wyeth’s Weatherside (1965) come alive. He points out “the little specks of red in Christina’s window”—the geraniums that she always loved—and the tiny knot on the clothesline that show Wyeth’s obsession with detail.

As a new editor at the Museum, I knew I had a lot to learn. (I’m a newspaper veteran, not an art historian.) In my first days on the job, I’d hear coworkers rattling on about “the Steinkamp” or “the Archipenko.” I would nod sagely. Back at my desk, I’d look up those names in the Museum database. Aha! The Steinkamp is not some intimidating thing—it’s that flowing, ever-changing tree image projected on a wall of West Building. And the Archipenko is, of course, the Blue Dancer, balancing tirelessly on one pointed toe.

Well, two down, 3,834 to go.

Fortunately, I learned early on, not all of the Museum’s art is on display at once. For the moment I’d forget about the works in storage and focus on the 700 or so I could see.

And fortunately our curators and educators hadn’t left me to learn on my own. Before the new galleries opened, they had put together a cell phone tour to guide me—or any visitor—to some of the Museum’s highlights. Press 236 in the African gallery, and I could hear Ledelle Moe telling how she sculpted each head in Congregation. Or press 235 near the Krater, and curator Mary Ellen Soles tells about “the great intellectual drinking parties of ancient Greece.”

Listening and looking became my favorite part of the new job. When I had a bit of time to spare, I’d head to the galleries, check out an audio wand, and scope out a painting or two. Exploring reassured me that my ignorance was not total: amid the mysteries I found old friends Degas and Wyeth and O’Keeffe—oh, and have you heard, we have Rodins?

So, four months I’ve been here now. A couple of newspaper friends came by for lunch, and when we finished I led them into the galleries.

“You’ve got to see this,” I urged. “Lines That Link Humanity. By a Ghanaian artist, El Anatsui. Isn’t it amazing? He made it of old liquor bottle labels and even pieces of old newspaper printing plates—thousands of them.—And look, over here, this is the Steinkamp­—”

“You really know your art!” one friend exclaimed.

“Well,” I replied, “I’ve been keeping an ear out.”

Listen to remarks by curators, educators, and scholars using your own cell phone in the galleries, gardens, or Museum Park. Or check out an audio wand at the Information Desk for $3 (free for NCMA members). To listen on your own MP3 player, download the Cell Phone Tour.

Andrew Wyeth, Winter 1946 (Detail), 1946, Tempera on board; 31 3/8 x 48 in. North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina (72.1.1)

The death of Andrew Wyeth today has reminded me of a story…

I met Wyeth only once. In the mid-1980s I was working as the curator of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine. Early one summer the ladies at the Museum’s reception desk fluttered into my office, whispering that Andrew Wyeth and his son Jamie were in the galleries. Everyone in the building found some excuse to pass through the galleries and say hello. I too walked out and introduced myself. Jamie was smiling and gregarious, easy with a handshake, but Andrew held back, obviously uncomfortable with the attention. I offered to take them through an exhibition I had organized of contemporary Maine art. Although none of the work was sympathetic to the Wyeths’ style of realism, Andrew gave each painting a careful look. One picture absolutely delighted him. It was a large surrealist composition with floating tables and chairs and photographs seemingly taped to the canvas. The photographs and tape were actually painted illusions, but Wyeth wouldn’t believe it. Waiting until I was distracted in conversation with Jamie, he sneaked up to the painting and quietly tried to pick the tape off the canvas with his fingernail. “Well, good damn!” he giggled, amazed at being tricked. It was the unguarded giggle of child and startled me. I turned towards him. Seeing he was caught, he lowered his eyes and stepped back from the painting. Of course, I should have sent him to sit in the corner for time-out. But he was Andrew Wyeth.

Many people, including Wyeth’s biographer, have noted the man-child dimension of the artist’s personality. Sheltered and at times suffocated by his family, he never fully grew up. Imaginatively, he remained an adolescent, frightened by death and loss, rattled by sex, and compelled towards the outlaw and outcast edges of society. I would argue that it is Wyeth’s peculiar “immaturity” of vision that gives his paintings that memorable jolt and separates Wyeth from his legion of weak imitators.

That said, when I am in the Museum’s galleries, standing in front of that magnificent trio of Wyeth paintings–Weatherside, Winter 1946 and Sea Dog–I still find it hard to reconcile their stark and troubling seriousness with my memory of that giddy gray-haired kid who just had to scratch a painting.

Andrew Wyeth’s Weatherside, Winter 1946 and Sea Dog are currently on view, side-by-side, in the Modern Gallery.