Many of my happiest childhood memories occurred in museums. From a young age, my mother always reminded me of how lucky I am to live in such close proximity to some of the world’s finest cultural institutions. As a child, my family took many weekend trips to museums in New York City. It was during one of MoMA’s free Friday night promotions that I saw “Starry Night” by Vincent Van Gogh for the first time in person. As I approached “Starry Night,” I noticed a crowd circled around the painting. However, when I got closer to the crowd I noticed that many people were simply taking a selfie with the world-renowned painting before walking away, failing to take the time to appreciate the painting. In the article “A Starry Night Crowded With Selfies” published in the New York Times in late September 2017, Ann Temkin explains that “It’s as if taking a photo of a work in a museum means ‘seeing’ it to a viewer…”. Furthermore, an increasing number of museum visitors desire to take a selfie with the artwork instead of taking the time to experience the artwork. On that Friday night I enjoyed Van Gogh’s masterpiece, observing the vibrant colors and thick brush strokes pictures fail to portray.
Museums manifest that artwork is more than just pictures of beautiful landscapes and fashions of the past; artwork provides an exclusive view into the elusive lives of people throughout history who experienced many different circumstances. However, while viewing and analyzing artwork provides a
Art galleries are essential to the art world, however, is not the only source for audiences to view art. To begin with, art and artwork is defined as the application of human skill, creativity and imagination. Taking this into consideration, individuals need to examine the nature and purpose of art galleries as a facility to collaborate, organize and display a collection of artworks. As art however, is any expression of human creativity, its presence is not bound to art galleries and is evidently present in the world around us be it in photographs, the internet or even in graffiti.
One pleasant afternoon, my classmates and I decided to visit the Houston Museum of Fine Arts to begin on our museum assignment in world literature class. According to Houston Museum of Fine Art’s staff, MFAH considers as one of the largest museums in the nation and it contains many variety forms of art with more than several thousand years of unique history. Also, I have never been in a museum in a very long time especially as big as MFAH, and my experience about the museum was unique and pleasant. Although I have observed many great types and forms of art in the museum, there were few that interested me the most.
It must have been 13 years or so since I have been to the art museum, back in elementary school, on a one of a kind field trip. 13 years is way too long to have been away from the art museum, as my experience this year reminded me that. It was a beautiful, sunny October day, although it felt like July, and it was an even better day to talk a walk through the vast, mesmerizing pieces of art that the museum has to offer. The North Carolina Museum of Art provides an abundance of artwork from various time periods, cultures, and one can find art anywhere from Egyptian, to classical, to modern and contemporary art. The artwork that the museum provides not only displays an abundance of artwork, but
Positioned alongside Central Park in the heart of New York City, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the largest and most influential art museums in the world. The Met houses an extensive collection of curated works that spans throughout various time periods and different cultures. The context of museum, especially one as influential as the Met, inherently predisposes its visitors to a certain set of understandings that subtly influence how they interpret and ultimately construct meanings about each individual object within the museum. Brent Plate in Religion, Art, and Visual Culture argues that “objects obtain different meanings in different locations and historical settings.”An object placed on display behind a glass case inside a museum would hold a vastly different meaning if it was put on sale by a street vendor, like the ones who set up their tables in close proximity to the Met. The different meanings that objects are able to obtain is attributed to the relationships that are established between the object itself and the environment that surrounds it. These relationships often involve the kind of audience that a museum attracts, where the work is exhibited, and how the exhibits within a museum is planned out. Museums subsequently have the ability to control how these relationships are established which influences the way a viewer is able to construct meaning. When a visitor observes an object on display at the Met, they instinctively construct a certain set of
Within such assemblage museums and their unsettled artifacts can be situated as affect- image (83). They are not fixed and static places which contain unsettled objects. They can depart from the common sense world and organize systems that control appearance and relationships and suggest the future. Museums select what they represent and; consequently, excludes parts of history according to their interests. This resembles the white policy which stresses and enlarges a specific trait in the colonized and excludes any implication of positive traits.
“This world is but a canvas to our imagination”; which always has been throughout the years. Art has been separated in different categories such as architectures, sculptures, photography and paintings. For my semester project, which was to visit an art or historic museum; my classmates and I went to the Reynolda House Museum of American art which provided us both the art and history. At first, we all assume that the visit would be boring or the art gallery would be dull. What shocked us the most was the actual experience being in the museum instead of just talking about it. We experienced multiple feelings during our visit in the art gallery as well as the historic area. From the art gallery which held many paintings of artist, to the house that R.J Reynolds and his family once occupied. Furthermore, it also showed us the legacy of R.J Reynolds and his family has left behind for the people of Winston-Salem.
In the Robyn Autry article, it mainly focuses on the national conflict of museums mainly focusing towards African American. The author travel to 15 museums around the United States that focuses towards African American. She mainly talks about how the African American were facing numerous hardships in the U.S and how the museum represents those issues to the general public. She believes the way to tell the hardship of African Americans is by exhibiting through a museum. When traveling through these museums she focused towards “centered on three traumatic episodes: capture and displacement from Africa, enslavement, and racial segregation” (Autry 64). The author of the articles wants to show that over time that museums meanings has changed over
Late on Wednesday night, my phone ringed. It was a text message from my friend Pedro, “Do you want to visit an art museum tomorrow”. Knowing I needed to go, I texted him back quickly, “pick me up after your class tomorrow and we can adventure to The Weatherspoon Art Museum at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro”. After Pedro’s class, we explored the museum observing multiple art works, and I was invoked by three, art pieces. All three were different and intriguing in their own way. For instance, the painting that is on top of the cover page with all the wavy hair was painted by Catherine Murphy and is known as the “Frosted”. This painting was very delightful because of its unique elements. Second, the sculpture in the middle of the cover page is an image of a wooded animal. This sculpture was crafted by Deborah Butterfield and is recognized as Lunalilo. Also, at the bottom of the cover page is a sculpture constructed by Dan Graham, the sculpture was known as Triangle Solid with
17. On my museum experience, I took it in like every other visit to the museum I have ever had: much like other children expressed wonder and amazement at a circus performance or sports game; I was awestruck and mesmerized by the colors, the atmosphere, and the same restrained joy that I felt evident in the eyes of all the other observers. My girlfriend and I made our way through the museum, blending in with crowds of other viewers to see Cezanne, Gauguin, Brueghel, O’Keefe and the like in the permanent collection, making time to go from one end of the spectrum to the other. But my heart has always had a soft spot for
time to visit museums. When public art is funded by the government, the artist’s imagination is
Throughout the vast history of art, historians can find connections throughout the centuries. Artists from the beginning of humankind have been inspired by the world around them. From the Apollo 11 stones to present day, history and culture have provided inspiration and have been the focus of various pieces. Examining artwork from the 15th-18th century, viewers can be shown a whole world that would be unknown to us without these artist’s contributions. History, religion, and cultural events have sculpted the art world, and we can observe this through many pieces during the 15th-18th centuries.
I went to The Art Institute of Chicago on a Thursday when it was free for Illinois resident and when there were different exhibitions going on. There was long line at the entrance near the museum at 6pm in the evening. I went alone because I thought I can have better focus on picking a good art work. I was ready to go through all the magnificent paintings for my art museum paper. As I walked through the museum, there were colorful Indian Modern art exhibited for the occasion. They were big and vibrant. The was also a special exhibition of Tarsila Do Amaral, one of the leading Latin American Modernist artist who paint like Cubism, Futurism and expressionism. Her artworks were childlike in terms of the painting style of objects and people. I was most fond of the modernist and contemporary part of the gallery with painters like Salvador Dali and Francis Bacon. I was fascinated with Salvador Dali’s Venus de Milo with Drawers. The drawers unnaturalistically located on a human body was intriguing. The depth of the human mind and subconsciousness are creatively represented by these drawers on Venus de Milo. Francis bacon’s work Figure with meat was not bad either. Figure with Meat is a disturbing depiction of Pope Innocent X sat in front of a cow carcass cut lengthways in half. (Gould) Like his other painting, the theme is dark and twisted. The carcass is included serve as a direct reminder that death will be at the end await
Being a lifetime art enthusiast, I spent the majority of my San Francisco trip visiting the best museums they had to offer. All of them inspired me in one way or another but only one of them in particular actually motivated me to continue to become a better artist. The Cartoon Art Museum, or CAM, brightly stood out among the rest because at this museum I was surrounded by the icons of my childhood that originally inspired me to pursue an art career. My passion for my work was rekindled after perusing this museum.
After getting over my initial reluctance, I got butterflies in my stomach. This was only the 2nd time I’d been to an art museum, so I wanted to make the most of it. When we first arrived, we looked around at some paintings. I visited an exclusive temporary exhibit of Edvard Munch which included a surprising amount of paintings of naked women. Nothing caught my eye in the first few galleries, but then I stumbled on an exhibit called “In Character” by Nam June Paik. As soon as I walked in, I got embarrassingly excited. I constantly had to stop myself from running around the museum like a madman. All the TV sculptures and simple, childlike drawings had been just so incredible to me. The piece that I really enjoyed the most was a sculpture called “Self-Portrait.”
The Cambridge Dictionary Online defined museums as “places of study, buildings where objects of historical, scientific or artistic interest are kept, preserved and exhibited”. To The Museums Association, a museum is “an institution which collects documents, preserves, exhibits and interprets material evidence and associated information for the public benefit”. Since 1998, this definition has changed. Museums now enable the public to explore collections for inspiration, learning and enjoyment. They are institutions that collect, safeguard and make accessible artefacts and specimens, which they hold in trust for society. Mike Wallace (1996) categorised museums into four distinct types, namely National Museums that hold collection of