Essay Museum of Modern Art in New York

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.

New York City, one of the greatest cities of the world, is remarkable because of its history, culture, and diversity. It is world renowned for its skyscrapers, Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden, Broadway entertainment, Radio City Music Hall, Central Park, and even restaurants specializing in ethnic foods. However, the thing that most intrigues and excites me about New York City is the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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

Countless art has been sought-after throughout history. Explorers, scientists, art collectors, politicians, and entrepreneurs from Western nations have sought out and removed art from the lands of great civilizations, often with the assistance and participation of local people and governments. Even as cultural property faces immediate danger today in conflict zones like Syria and Mali, there is circumstantial evidence that some nations are awakening to the political and foreign policy benefits that can flow from the repatriation of cultural patrimony. While on a different scale from World War II, historic structures, religious monuments, and other priceless ancient times continue to suffer collateral damage and manipulation in armed conflict. Relics have been stolen, smuggled and sold in what is a reported multibillion dollar underground market. They have become the illicit prizes of private collectors and the subject of legal claims against museums. Of the countless museums subject to legal claims, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City happens to be one of them. “The Metropolitan Museum has acquired thousands of works and objects of art from the antiquities”. “For the past several years, the government of Turkey has warned U.S. and foreign museums (including The Metropolitan Museum of Art), that unless ancient objects from Turkish soil are given up on demand, Turkey will stop lending artworks” (The Committee for Cultural Policy, 2015). Turkey continues to up the

This museum is the first time Johnson started to move away from the influence of Mies and the International Style. The international style of architecture emerged in the 1920’s and 1930’s. You can see this style of architecture in photo A. Common characteristics of International Style buildings are said to be rectilinear forms, ligh taut plane surfaces that have been completely stripped of applied ornamentation and decoration, and open interior spaces. The typical materials of this style are glass and steel usually combined with less visible reinforced concrete. In picture number four you can see Munson Williams Proctor museum has opaque stone-clad walls, and uses luxuriant materials such as granite and statuary bronze, and a very balanced and symmetrical design. These aspects were all part of Johnson’s growing new interest in neo classical typologies, or what would be known as New Formalism in modern architecture. Neo formalism emerged in the 1950s and really took off in the 1960s, it remained popular in the third quarter of the twentieth

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.

choices of medium seem to be purposefully chosen by the artists; the choice of color and

With exhibitions of the most thought-provoking art, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago is one of the Nation’s largest facilities devoted to the art of our time (“About the MCA”) . The mission of the MCA is to offer a direct experience to the public of modern day art and living artists. German architect Joseph Paul Kleihues designed the new building with seven times the square feet of its previous facility (“The Building”) . October of 1967 the museum opened its doors to the public for the first time. The Museum of Contemporary Art is a symbol of modern art, culture, and the artist of our time. It is a stepping stone in history and will leave footprints in the heart of Chicago for many generations to come.

The Guggenheim Museum is a form of abstract art which has no separate floor levels but uses a spiral ramp. This was his ideal of continuous space and most significant building. His principles

Jan van Eyck was active since 1422 and died in 1441. He was the most celebrated painter of the fifteen-century in Europe. One of his famous works is “The Last Judgment”. At first sight this work immediately attracted my attention. The painting’s stunning colors and the fact that it reminded me of a previous similar work I have seen, triggered in my mind. The material that is used is oil on canvas, transferred from wood. The size of this work is 22 1/4 *7 2/3 in. (56.5 * 19.7cm).

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

“How do you make a building for contemporary art that stays contemporary in the future without stooping to a neutral language? And how do you attract a big public without compromising the selfish, private, exclusive time we all want to have in a museum?” These questions, put forward by Elizabeth Diller of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, represent the urbanistic motivation supporting the construction of Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA). In such a manner Boston’s ICA engages, not only with the urban citizen, but also the urban landscape in which the site is located. The ICA conveys the idea of architecture as art in itself. As a presenter of art to the urban citizen and because of its open design, the inside allows the citizens to not only appreciate the art within the building but also see the art of the building’s natural environment and setting.

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.