“Just imagine” she said, pressing both thumbs to the center of the screen and pulling them slowly apart. “A hundred years ago, these three people knew each other. They dated, slept together, painted each other, and now their portraits are hanging, side-by-side in the National Portrait Gallery.”

I squinted, trying to imagine it.

Lauren and I were sitting in her apartment in Brooklyn, leaning in over her iPhone as she gave me a photo tour of her recent visit to London. The trip appeared to have been neatly divided between pitchers of beer with her best friend and long, slow walks through some of the world’s great museums, which is how we’d gotten to those three friends and their portraits. I’d been given tours of trip photos before, but with Lauren the experience was very different. This was not a quick flip through Instagram. As we sat there, side by side on her couch in the late afternoon, each photo came packaged with a little story of laughter or amazement or, in this case, of awe. She’d look up from the phone, catch a hold of something I couldn’t see, and be in to the moment, back there, explaining.

I’m not sure I can put useful words to why this is such a big deal. Museums have always felt plainly overwhelming to me, and my attention inevitably bounces around the room, flitting between other groups, my inevitably empty stomach or the dwindling patience of whoever I’m with. On the rare occasions that I bring a sketchbook and am actually focussing on the artwork, the appreciation is all bound up in the relative beauty of the piece, never to the placards or dates, never past the piece to peer in to the story that surrounds it. This way of looking - of looking past - is where the Lauren method feels like a revelation, like someone opening the door to a whole different way of experiencing something that I thought I had figured out. And sitting there with her, as she ooh'd and ahh'd and peeled back the surface of every new image that slid on-screen , I promised myself that next time I’m in a museum I’ll take a moment to adjust - to stop and squint and just imagine .