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We are at NorthPark Center shopping mall.  The place is famous for hosting, in the common spaces of the center, contemporary art exhibitions coming from the Nasher’s collection and portraying very prominent art works from around the world.

I see a Warhol and I am about to take a picture of it, when a security guard comes to me and tells me it is not allowed to take photographs. Presuming that the shop owners don’t want people to take pictures (that happens at the quinceañera street in Mexico City also) I explain that I am only taking a picture of the artwork.

-    I know - he says - , but you can’t take pictures”.

 

-    How strange, because I have seen a dozen people making selfies.

-    I don’t know about those people but it is not allowed to take pictures.  

To make a short description of an annoying discussion, I tried to make him understand how illogical it is that he comes onto a person who deliberately takes a picture of something when everybody has a camera on their telephones and they’re making pictures of whatever they want.  The guy kept repeating the same thing as if I was retarded, until he decided to say with a fake smile:

-    This is what we call private property.

I immediately understood that WE did not include me, whatever communist country I came from. He was also showing me that these people who hired him and have so much money that decided to exhibit their artwork in their hallways, and I should appreciate their generosity, shut my mouth and do as they consider appropriate because it is their house, not mine.