Museum Critique

Douglas Crimp begins his essay by delivering a story about a librarian, Julia Van Haaftan and how she was interested in the photography organization at the Art and Architecture Division of the New York Public Library. In addition, Crimp delivers his most enlightening and meaningful point by explaining how Julia Van Haaftan is also now a “director of the Photographic Collections Documentation Project”. She discovered several lost books and photographs, which she researched, re-categorizing, and placed them under the photography or art category in the photographic collection. I found this section of the essay entertaining because it demonstrates that the history books can get lost

When a museum has prestige on a national level, they can be under high scrutiny of exhibits or objects displayed by the public. Controversial topics, for example, the Enola Gay exhibit, has left historians hesitant and confused on how to create exhibits with correct history, but also not upsetting any individual who were involved with said history. Historians have a trying task of addressing both sides of a historical event, even though it might depict individuals in an unflattering way. A historian is not allowed to have a bias for events, this could have an impact on the way an exhibit is created. Another point that was brought to light in Bunch’s article was museums have the ability to educate the public, so difficult topics should not be

The Brooklyn Museum hosts around 1.5 million works of art of different variations. One particularly fascinating genre is the Ancient Egypt exhibition. On the third floor, the exhibit is split into two sections: Early and New Kingdom, which is separated by a conjoined gallery. Entering into the conjoined gallery, artifacts from both eras are encased in rectangular glass. On the left, is the entrance to the New Kingdom Wing. In this section, a string of spotlights illuminates each encasement with a golden warm hue. Inside some cases are miniature shaved skulls placed upon a singular black pole. In others are lapis jewelry, and fragments of etched clay pottery. Further into the exhibit is yet another enclosed space. The walls are painted midnight black and the lighting is dimmed. There are rows of laid canvas wrapped mummies and tablet remnants all separated in glass.

Upon, my visit to the Brooklyn Museum on Wednesday October 12, 2016 I chose African Innovations instead of The European Art Exhibit. The country that my artifact originated from is Africa, the country is Nigeria. Nigeria is in West Africa, along the eastern coast of the Gulf of Guinea, and just north of the equator. The borders of modern Nigeria were not created until the British united their colonial power over the area in 1914.

The use of the oil paint falls from broad and gestural to refined and purposeful. Over all the painting style is semi-loose to retain essential information within the painting. The worm colors bring a comforting feel to the piece of thoughtful solitude and prayer. Although this painting depicts what life may have been to Indigenous people in the 19th century, the artist shows his lack of understanding of the culture. Respect is one of the core values to many planes people and respect goes further than the relationship between people but all things in life such as birds and stone and plants. They all have a sprit that is considered a relative. The problematic aspects of this painting are how sacred items are leisurely treated as objects. The three most noteworthy items are the cha’nupa, cansiga, and waph’a’ha. First, the cha’nupa should be propped up or held and not let be lying on the ground and put together. Second, the cansiga should also be propped up and face up at all times. Finally, an eagle feather or waph’a’ha should never touch the ground. These are things that can be damaging to our own understanding of history, Indigenous culture and spirituality. Although this is just one painting a person without the cultural knowledge could see this and believe that the treatment is tolerable since this is a paining from the past and insightful artist. This paining wile well

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was my choice for the museum visits. Getting to the museum was an adventure in itself. My friends and I had taken the subway and had gotten off a stop early. We had walked around Central Park before we finally saw the museum. The front steps were packed with many different groups of people. There were students on trips, tourists, and local residents. It was a magnificent sight to look at. Walking into the museum felt like walking into another world.

In 1988 Gioiosa created an interesting and flashy painting of obscure shape; his painting was called Asterope. In a decade preoccupied with success and status, art got bigger in scope, ambition, theme, budget, promotion and cultural presence. Art became an extension of one's success or power (Gallery, The 80’s). In Asterope he uses bold neon colors clearly divided by lines to symbolize the bold and flamboyant times that were the 80’s. However in Of Beauty, Of Joy, Of Stillness, Of Love, the viewer can see a much more gradient and shaded look in the colors. Even though these two painting are very different, they both convey symbolism as a key role. In Asterope the viewer can see the bold colors as symbolism of the 80’s, and in Of Beauty, Of Joy, Of Stillness, Of Love the viewer sees a much bigger mandala as a symbol of a higher, more powerful being. “In essence I think of my work as an observation that interprets and reveals an ineffable presence. Through the living sense of paint I try to achieve tranquility and pure spacial awareness of an undiscovered landscape, an infinite void, that transcends physical time.” (Gioiosa, Rusti)

From September 2013 through January 2014, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City was home to an exhibition entitled Medieval Treasures from Hildesheim. The exhibition featured 48 pieces from various media which all originated from the UNESCO Heritage Sites of Saint Mary's Cathedral or St. Michael's Church in Hildesheim, Germany. These objects consisted of 6 full or partial manuscripts and 42 sculptural pieces, including 7 reliquaries, 4 portable altars, and 3 liturgical fans. Most of the sculptural pieces had liturgical uses, an almost all were crafted out of copper, gold, and/or silver. What is most fascinating about these items is that none of them belong to the Metropolitan Museum; all were borrowed from the Dom-Museum, the Dombibliotek,

In the article, Japan, 500–1000 A.D. (Metropolitan Museum of Art), the main ideas of this article were that the Japanese civilization had a lot of resources from a new culture with China and Korea. They learned about a lot of the different types of art and medicine like, literature. The article states, “This new culture is essentially Chinese and includes literature, philosophy, art, architecture, science, medicine, and statecraft.” In this other article, Theater: Noh Theater (Encyclopedia Britannica), they have kind of the same idea. The writers of these articles both think that wars and other disasters did good to their community. China and Korea took a huge part in Japan’s medicine and the different forms of art, and the second article says

The wall painting features Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future, sitting surrounded on both sides by two monks -standing immediately to the left and right, slightly to the back-, the ruling king and queen -sitting and in elaborate headdresses and robes, further left and right-, the crown prince and princess -standing between their parents and Maitreya-, and many other disciples and bodhisattvas -doing

Art can be used to express a specific understanding of the supernatural, the values, the universe, human body and life, and the environment of a culture. To Buddhists, the sand mandala’s represent the universe and human life. Mandala’s represent the world in its heavenly form on the outer level, a map of the human mind being transformed into an enlightened mind and a secret level showing the perfect balance of energies in the body and mind. The art in Buddhism reflects the idea that art can be used to express deeper meanings such as the universe and human life. Art can affirm cultural values are the next aspect of culture. The sand mandalas are an accurate example of this as they use them to represent some of their cultural values about life,

The materials used to create this painting was oil and the medium used was a canvas. In my opinion, the painting still looked quite new for being over two hundred years old. The painting looked finished to me because it was not lacking detail. Each stroke of oil made onto the canvas could be seen clearly. You are able to see the smooth or rough texture that was created by the oil. The painting is extremely large, which caused me to see more of the specific detail in the painting. Each stroke of the painting to emphasize detail and figures made the painting all the more appealing to my eyes. In some parts of the painting, the oil coloring was applied more thickly, such as to show the ridges and creasing of the clothes, causing some parts of the work of art to be impasto. However, the coloring of the floor was smooth giving the work of art more of a cleaner

This summer, the Smithsonian museum has appointed me to travel through history in their time machine to collect six artifacts for their latest exhibit, The History of Communication Technology. All of the artifacts need to be able to fit into one backpack, and reflect the time and place the object was from. The technology of communication represents the change as well as the continuity of how cultural ideas spread from one person to another throughout history. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to travel in a time machine to learn about the past of communication technology.

After working on a recent website redesign for a class project, I came across the Irving Penn exhibition being held at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and knew it was definitely something I wanted to see and write about for my paper. Beyond Beauty was probably by far my favorite exhibition! His work is absolutely amazing all of the color enriched photographs on display and great monochrome photographs really set off an era of his history in fashion photography. Some of his photographs Red Rooster, displayed such a contrast in his collection due to the high contrast and saturation of color compared to Bee, which was a dull contrasted photograph. I feel like it was a little hard to look at anything else because the exhibition was so amazing and strong interest of mine. I also found on the 4th floor, the Luce Foundation Center to be quite interesting. The artwork was different in color and the saturation of hues. It was a nice painting that expressed a different emotion of beauty with works like Snake Charmer by Dennis Burlingame and Green Chinese Jar by Ruth Payne

They are vibrant and strike the viewer catching their attention they also remind me of works done by Andy Warhol and his use of vibrant colors. I really enjoy the stripe technique used within the painting it is very unique and I have not seen anything like it before. Another reason why I liked this work was because the subject matter and love, happiness and peace is very important, especially right now. Families are splitting up and getting divorced, indicating that people need to be willing to develop a relationship like the one sown in the work before settling down with someone. Also, this painting reminds me of the relationship between my grandparents, they have been married for over fifty years and have one of the strongest relationships I have ever witnessed. This is the type of relationship I would like to develop with my wife in the future. A relationship with one hundred percent trust and happiness. I really enjoy this type of art, vibrant and modern paintings with a clear and evident message are the types of art I enjoy the most because art is a great way to express oneself. I also love vibrant colors because they make me feel much happier and grab my