Munson-Proctor Art Institute Essay

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.

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

Influenced by his readings of ancient and modern architectural writings, Jefferson gleaned the best from both his readings and from his observations in Europe, creating his own personal style of architecture, a mix of Neoclassicism’s Roman temples, and Palladian villa. Partly, because of Jefferson’s influence, our federal buildings set an American precedent for the neoclassical style. Jefferson’s admiration for neoclassical style went so far as to design

The building at 111 South Michigan Avenue, home of the Art Institute of Chicago, was opened in 1893 as the World’s Congress Auxiliary Building for the World’s Columbian Exposition. The building was passed on to the Art Institute after the end of the exposition. Designed in the Beax-Arts style by Boston firm Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge, building has become an icon for chicagoans an tourists alike. The Modern Wing, the Art Institute’s latest and largest addition to date, opened on May 16, 2009, and was designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano. The 264,000 square foot addition now houses the museum’s collections of modern European painting and sculpture, contemporary art, architecture and design, and photography. The new

The exhibit that I viewed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art was one about European Art between the years 1100-1500. This was a series of paintings, sculptures, architecture, and tapestry of the Medieval and Early Renaissance as well as objects from the Middle East. This exhibit was an important part of the history of the Philadelphia Museum of Art because for the first time, Italian, Spanish, and Northern European paintings from the John G. Johnson collection were shown. It gave me a good idea of what the paintings were like in these four centuries and reflected ideas of both the east and the west.

The Whitney Museum of American Art has often been referred to a citadel of American Art, partially due to the museums façade, a striking granite building (Figure 1), designed by Bauhaus trained architect Marcel Breuer. The museum perpetuates this reference through its biennial review of contemporary American Art, which the Whitney has become most famous for. The biennial has become since its inception a measure of the state of contemporary art in America today.

The 19th century architect, Sir John Soane (1792-1824), is one of the greatest architects and educators of the Regency era. Despite the Bank of England being his most renowned piece of architecture, one should not forgot the architectural reputation of the ‘Sir John Soane’s Museum.’ As stated in the Oxford Dictionary of Architecture, the museum is “one of the most complex, intricate, and ingenious series of interiors ever conceived.” Clearly, without Soane’s ‘ingenious’ and ‘complex’ use of top-lit galleries and double - height spaces , the museum would lack it’s originality and inspirational qualities that make it one of the most distinctive museums in London. The atmospheric journey begins with the façade of number 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields,

The Chrysler Building is an Art Deco style skyscraper that was built during one of the most severe economic downturns in this country's history. The building was finished in the year 1930 and is located in New York City. The Chrysler Building was constructed using stainless steel over an exposed building surface which was a first for its time (History of Walter P. Chrysler and the Chrysler Building, “n.d.). The next important thing to think about when understanding the Chrysler Building is to figure out what it was designed for. Although the building was not owned by Chrysler it was used for the corporation's offices which used the building until the mid 1950’s (Chrysler Building, “n.d). Next, when one looks at the Chrysler Building they can tell it represents an Art Deco style by its many unique features. The Chrysler Building represents the Art Deco style because of its monuments,

The art piece that I chose to critique is the sculpture of a figure kneeling down and getting shocked. It is located on campus near the Morris University Center(muc). When I first saw this sculpture it caught my attention immediately, because of how gruesome the piece was. I feel like I don’t have a good understanding of what the sculpture represents, but it seems like it would raise plenty of controversy, due to its erotic features. It seems like the artist was venting his emotions when he created his idea. The sculpture is fairly large in size, which makes it noticeable, among the other art pieces on campus. The sculpture media consist of wood and concrete, and metal mostly. The individual is keeling down toward the west and is supported

The majority of the collection is from the mid-20th-century and seems sparse in pieces before the 1900s. Many of the art pieces from this collection were part of the museum founder’s, Ralph Norton, home collection, as he sought out most works that conveyed his time period. Some of the paintings exhibited in the collection that were previously part of Norton’s home collection include works by: John Marin, George Bellows, Charles Sheeler, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Demuth and Robert

From the observation tower the horizontal building’s three parallel bands can be seen that extend into the lush landscape. The architects’ concept was to immerse the museum in nature by creating a set of three bracketed pavilions under one roof surrounded by gardens. The roof can be seen as

Positioned alongside Central Park within 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 museums, especially one as influential as the Met, inherently predisposes its visitors to a set of understandings that subtly influence how they interpret and ultimately construct meanings about each individual object within a museum. By analyzing two separate works on exhibit at the Met, I will pose the argument that museums offer a unique expression of a world view that is dictated through every element of its construction.

The Resurrection of Christ is from the Baroque period. This work of art portrays the sense of dramatic antagonism that Caravaggio achieved by manipulating light across full range of tones, changing the intensity and transforming its radiance this was done so that every beam and shadow expressed a dissimilar emotional content. (Sayre, 2010) In Rembrandt painting he focused on using emotional contrast between light and dark tones to emphasize the emotional difference. Here you can see pure light radiating out of the tomb of darkness. Christ himself begins to rise from the tomb in the light of true symbolic

The most prominent quality of Elizabeth Bishop’s, “One Art,” remains the concise organization and rhyme scheme of the poem, which amazingly keeps the audience informed at all times what the theme. Her choice of a villanelle constantly reminds the audience that “the art of losing” always seem easy until one loses something so much more than an inanimate object and at the point, it does become a “disaster.” Written in 1976, the poem is very modern and uses an impeccable rhyme scheme, diction, and imagery to convey the hints of misery and frantic the speaker feels.

Before the mid-twentieth century, museums in Europe and the United States were generally planned in variations of the neoclassical style. But, the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao moved the heading of gallery outlines, which gave an extensive show venue to twentieth century and modern art, designed by the famous architect Frank Gehry. Architecture is important nowadays to the public, because it offers a physical surrounding environment in where we live in. Moreover, architecture is not only affected by the culture, but also by the economy of the country.