I wish I could describe myself as an art lover in early childhood,
but I didn't have the concept of art.
Once I learned to spell at age 12, learning and new discoveries poured in.
Before then,
because my autism doesn't allow me to speak except by computer voice synthesizer,
I couldn't even tell my parents that I'd made the most important discovery
of my life here at The Met.
[piano music]
[Meredith Bergmann] I'm an artist, and my whole life is in art and with my family.
I brought Dan here many, many times, as a very young child.
[Daniel Bergmann] I discovered this gallery, the Astor Chinese Garden Court,
and from then on it was a favorite destination.
Soon I could pull any caregiver to this court from anywhere in the Museum.
I contemplated these koi for hours on end, for years and years, because I knew
there was something to learn here.
I was starting to work on the question of my place in the world.
Fish became a metaphor for my life and autism,
as if I were in a parallel universe where nobody spoke.
[Michael Bergmann] Picture a very small child staring at the koi pond
for forty-five minutes. What is your job as a parent?
To pull him out and make him use his time in a more conventionally valuable way?
We knew that it was important to him, but we didn't know why.
[Daniel Bergmann] I didn't even know that sounds and sights went together and represented the same event.
I thought the world offered both things I could hear
[crowd noise]
[crowd noise stops]
and things I could see as separate phenomena.
One day when I was about nine years old, while I was looking,
I suddenly realized that the sound of the waterfall
was the same event as the sight of the water falling.
[water falling]
Sound and sight went together,
and there were only half as many things to understand in the world.
I remember understanding people's footsteps as we walked out of the Museum.
I could begin to understand cars moving and people coming into our apartment.
The most important part was watching people talk to each other.
For the first time,
I could put their expressions together with the words they made and begin to
understand the meanings of subtle facial expressions.
To someone as completely overwhelmed as I was,
this was a great relief and a fascinating discovery.
As great as the discovery was, it was not a cure.
I still couldn't speak.
[underwater sounds]
[Meredith Bergmann] We were always wondering what his inner life was like,
until he found a way to communicate.
[Michael Bergmann] We got to watch a human being put a mind together.
A big misconception about autism that I had to free myself from
is the idea that people with autism can't concentrate.
[Meredith Bergmann] Whatever it looks like he's doing, he's actually listening, thinking,
judging, forming a reaction, forming a response.
He's here.
And it meant a great,
great deal to me when Dan broke through the autism and was able to
enjoy art and be nourished by art,
and be as comfortable and as interested in The Met as I was.
[Daniel Bergmann] Making language allowed me to answer questions,
and answering questions taught me to think.
Museums became terribly important.
The exhibits stand still and the masterworks are easier to comprehend than
uncurated life outside.
It functions as a place where I can encounter the way people understand their
world, and once I put the effort in,
it reminds me that it is my world too.