The Art Museum

The very first time I ever went to an art museum, I was miserable. I was ten years old, and visiting New York City for the first time, and my father who has worked tirelessly to raise my siblings and me to have an appreciation for higher culture dragged us to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I cried within fifteen minutes of being there. All the people made me feel claustrophobic, and I was so set in my misery that I refused to try to enjoy the art. My mother, with all the patience that mothers are gifted with, took me through the museum. She entertained me with stories of when her and my father first fell in love in the city; rushed lunch dates in the museum, the halfway point between his job and her school. Gradually, we moved away from the more heavily populated galleries, and then it happened.

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.

The thought of art is more than what you see it is what you feel and what you learn from looking at it. Art can heal the soul and create and new outlook on images we may see every day. Sadly, we may not always see the art in things, pieces, or, humans.

As Edgar Degas once said, “ Art is not what you see, but what others make you see”. The St. Louis Art Museum is a place for artist to display their art and give spectators the option to see art from a new perspective. This was the case for me. As we walked up to the beautifully structured building that stood so tall and wide, my expectations were extremely high. At first glance I notice the bronze statue of King Louis IX of France riding high on his horse. From this statue alone, my expectations of the art museum grew stronger. I have never been to an art museum before, so I wasn’t sure of what to expect. My first expectation was to see huge detailed sculptures right as I walked through the door. That expectation didn’t come true.

The Carnegie Museum of Art was a museum created to focus on the art of tomorrow rather than already popular art and artists of today. A necessary part for that dream of Andrew Carnegie to become a reality is having a place to house these art pieces. While of course he could have just found an empty warehouse and placed all the art there that would neither have given the pieces of art justice nor would anyone want there personal collection to be placed on display there. Instead, in order to have a successful art museum you have to house the art in a place that does it justice. Museums heavily rely on their architecture to accurately portray and supplement the showpieces within the museum. Carnegie’s art museum

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

Among the many artworks I have seen, I decided to discuss about the “Sarcophagus Depicting a Battle between Soldiers and Amazons (Warrior Women)” from the Roman civilization. It was built sometime in between 140 A.D. to 170 A.D and is approximately forty and a half inches in length, ninety-one and a half inches in width, and fifty and a half inches tall in height (“Roman Sarcophagus”). This masterpiece appealed to me because of the unique approach that has been designed to honor the deceased. Many people are familiar with the formatting and inscriptions of a gravestone because it is usually engraved with an individual’s full name, birth date, and death date. During the Roman Empire, a sarcophagus, which is a coffin, was widely used to show decorative themes that includes: battle scenes, hunting scenes, weddings, or other memorable episodes from the life of the deceased individual. The most luxurious ones were made from marble surrounded by symbolic sculptures, figures and inscriptions on all four sides (“Sarcophagus”). Another feature that captured my attention was the large quantity of details used to bring out a lifelike aspect of the deceased individual’s favorable moments in their life. In this artwork, this sarcophagus was dedicated to a Roman commander. The exterior of the sarcophagus has been well-decorated and carved with exquisite details depicting a battle scene

The first room of the museum pulled in the audience with artwork from the 20th century. Although it may seem like artwork put together at the last minute, if you look closer, you will see something entirely different. Each piece had so much detail and unique qualities, such as style and art form, that you haven't see in many other museums before. It is important to appreciate the erratic design and character of each piece of art, but after seeing the entire museum, it is easy see the monumental difference between art now, and the art of our past. Art of the past showed a lot more

“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.

After walking into the museum, you see the first exhibit- modern art. Ripping off a band-aid quickly is a great example of how it felt moving through this exhibit “analyzing” this “art”. While walking around, each piece just got more and more complexing but what was more of a conundrum

After visiting the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston for the first time, I observed many interesting works of art representing various time periods. Of all the paintings that I saw last week, two landscaped pieces seemed to stick out in my mind; Andre Derain’s The Turning Road and Thomas Hart Benton’s Haystack. Though these two art works are similar in subject matter, they clearly reflect the different styles and time periods of their artists; the abstract Derain being a Fauvist and the more realistic painter Benton representing the American Scene style as a Regionalist.

My experience to the Dallas Museum of Art was a bit different from the last time I had attended the museum. I was curious to see what pieces of art there would be and if it would be the same as the previous visit which was long ago, but to me all the pieces of art were so different and very interesting. It may have been because I saw all the pieces in a new perspective since learning about the different types of paintings there can be and knowing how and where sculptures come from. Even though I do not know much of art I really gave it a try into seeing what the artist may have wanted us to get out of his work. By reading a view of the chapters made me aware of art, I wouldn’t call myself an expert, but it was actually nice knowing that a

The Museum of Modern Art  is a museum of art in Manhattan,New York City. This museum  has become a key figure in the making and collecting of modern art from different time periods. The Museum of Modern Art is known to be one of the biggest and most inspirational museums of modern work to date. This place holds some of the most well known pieces my many different artist. One of their most popular artist is Pablo Picasso, were over 1,000 of his artwork stands. Fortunately this museum not only holds Picasso's paintings but 140 of his sculptures as well. Picasso was not an artist that always signed all of his work. One time, he declined signing a canvas he painted, saying he could paint a fake picasso just like anyone else. Another time in 1943

When talking about the art gallery, the first scene occurred to my mind was the art gallery of museum. I went to some museums before to appreciate the artworks of different eras and cultures. Because I had lived in China for around twenty years, the most works I enjoyed were created by Chinese and they were filled with Chinese elements. And the majority of these artworks exist a long time and have diverse historical stories. Certainly, I had looked some contemporary arts, they delivered varieties of thoughts of the artists, reflecting their concerning about the current society, the life and death, even their unique opinion of the sex. So when we asked to do the gallery review, what I considered the gallery on this campus was that it would be more similar to a museum gallery which was constituted by lots of antique artwork. There would be many stories in the works, involving historical elements such as war and peace, also religious bible stories. Even I wondered that there would be prehistorical styles-the Bronze works or ceramic works-presented in the gallery.

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.”