A 77-Year-Old Museum Curator Is Using Gen Z Slang to Reach Young People. It’s Working.

In times of terror and strife, what the world needs more than ever is adorable older people having a ball as they try to teach younger people history.

Alison Luchs is a 77-year-old Renaissance art scholar at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. In an age where slang changes every day—and everyone over the age of 25 is trying to keep up with it comes off as a massive tool, the living embodiment of Steve Buscemi’s “how do you do, fellow kids?” private detective character from 30 Rock—Luchs is throwing caution and embarrassment to the wind.

She is purposely co-opting modern Gen Z slang in the cringest way possible to teach the TikTok generation a little something about ancient art. And it’s working.

77-Year-Old Art Museum Curator Becomes Huge TikTok Hit Using Modern Slang

According to The Washington Post, Luchs is the museum’s longtime deputy head of sculpture. She went viral after describing Italian ceramics and Roman urns using Gen Z slang with the authority of someone who barely understands what she’s saying but is in on the joke.

She’s spent nearly 5 decades studying European art, and presumably none of those 50 years of intense study prepared her to take to the internet to call a Roman stone urn “GOATED,” thanks in part to its color that “screamed big drip.”

The term “cringe” is wildly overused nowadays, applied even to the most bare-bones displays of sentimentality or sincerity. But it is a fitting way to describe Luchs, who wears the label like it’s a badge of honor, because it works.

The videos are racking up millions of views, with a lot of the commenters saying that, despite the extremely sweaty overuse of modern slang, she still doesn’t seem like she’s trying too hard. That in itself is a remarkable feat. She’s threaded the needle like no other.

The project came from the museum’s social media team, which wanted to reach younger audiences without dumbing down the art. The team rightfully feared that the whole thing would come off as unbearably cringy. Their fears were assuaged when Luchs approached it with the same study, practice, and respect for the rules that she brought to her own everyday scholarly work.

It could easily have come off as an embarrassing idea that should never have left the blue-sky stage. But instead, it feels like a scholar translating everything they know into another language so everyone can understand it. It’s no different from a book written in English being translated for international readers.

Those millions of user translating to real, tangible engagement. And not just with the videos themselves but with the museum, which reports receiving hundreds of submissions for a contest Luchs promoted on the museum’s TikTok page.

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