VMFA Museum Report

Museums have long served a purpose as cultural staples. For every museum, big and small, careful consideration is used in selecting its contents. When securing new items for a museum, it is most important to consider public appeal, educational value, and cost-effectiveness.

For my first museum paper I went to OSV since it was my first and only choice of venue. I went to the Towne’s House since I was told I would be able to find what I was looking for. After struggling to find a painting that I could read the information on, I saw the various the paintings along some walls and ceilings.

John B. Ravenal, the curator for the Modern and Contemporary Art collection at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA),

Whether pride, fear, or peace, art is intended to make the viewer feel an emotion. The visit to the St. Louis Art Museum had me excited to discover a new revelation. Being the second time that I had visited in two semesters, I was looking forward to a new angle to take, writing about some of my favorite pieces I was unable to include in my last paper. This semester we have been focusing on the Renaissance era (1300-1700), also known as the Rebirth. During this time, scholars and artists looked back towards the classical learning. Purposefully looking past the middle-ages, they focused on the classical past of Rome and Greece. During this time period many works of art were created, however, throughout this semester every major artist we studied

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

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is an art museum in Richmond, Virginia and was built on March 27, 1934. The Virginia Fine Arts Museum is one of the top art museums in the United States. They have a vast collection of exhibits including American, African, East Asian, Ancient, 21st century and many more. My favorite exhibit is The McGlothlin Collection of American Art. This exhibit caught my eye as soon as I walked in the door. There were many astonishing paintings that had a lot of emotion, but one stood out from all the others. The artist, Beauford Delaney, painted Marian Anderson.

This internship focused on education within the five part museum system. My role included giving tours of the Art on Campus Collection and helping with programming. Giving tours of the Art on Campus Collection allowed me to connect with students from different majors and teach them the practice and benefits of Visual Literacy. Facilitating these tours allowed me to develop skills to better accommodate the varying learning needs of students. This internship also consisted of helping plan and implement programs and events. I assisted in planning events and programs for the museums to connect students with art and helped in planning aspects of classes including one on

For this essay, we were required to go to the Getty Villa in Malibu and look for specific works of art in the J. Paul Getty Museum. The Getty Villa is on a hill adjacent to Malibu beach and requires a reservation to get inside. They do not allow pedestrian entrances, so I had to take public transportation and show proof of my Metro bus receipt to get in. Once inside, I took a shuttle up a curvy hill to the actual museum. When I got to the actual entrance, I was taken aback by how beautiful not only the view was, but the Villa was as well. It did not take me long to find the five artworks.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s art collection blends history and culture to aesthetically define a single individual: Isabella Stewart Gardner. From the “Mosaic Floor: Medusa” of the inner courtyard, to “The Coronation of Hebe” (Paolo Veronese) on the ceiling of the third-floor Veronese Room, Gardner determined every inch of both the interior and exterior of the structure housing her personal collection of masterpieces. This museum was specifically designed to resemble a 15th-century Venetian palazzo, inspired from the city that captured Gardner’s heart and ultimate vision of her legacy (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum). Assisted by Renaissance-revival architect, Willard T. Sears, the palazzo-like structure was realized in its full glory, albeit Renaissance ornamentation had no logical place in early 20th-century Boston, Massachusetts. However, Isabella Stewart Gardner’s fascination with the Renaissance was not solely because the works and buildings were visually pleasing. A palazzo, for a wealthy family, was a lasting symbol of status. Gardner’s choice to create a museum inspired by this Renaissance structure demonstrates how this Renaissance mindset can be translated into her modern context when crafting her own legacy.

The art museum I had visited was the Virginia Fine Art Museum, in Richmond. I saw a lot of brilliant work of art. But, there was one particular piece of art that stuck out to me the most, which was the Yang Guifei. This painting was made in 1979 during the Chinese, People’s Republic period. The picture is painted on a hanging scroll with ink and colors on a piece paper. The hanging scroll is about 5’0 feet tall, it has a women painted on it, in all different color such as dark pink, light green, light blue, yellow, grey, and black. The hanging scroll also has black Chinese words written down the side of the women. The eyes stuck out the most to me because it is painted black. The body of the women is painted a dark pink. The hair of the women

The Freer Sackler Gallery was the first Smithsonian art institution that captivated my interest and showed me the different aspects of art. There was something poetic in it’s aesthetic that further peaked my interest in becoming an Asian art museum curator and learning to speak Mandarin. Becoming a Teen Council member would be a great opportunity to utilize my communication skills while learning more about Asian art and culture. As a previous Teen Ambassador for the National Museum of African Art, I have gained experience in enhancing the public’s museum experience. I believe that museums have the ability to educate and inspire through art expression.

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.

After graduating from the University of Oklahoma, I started working at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. For about a year, I worked with artists and authors to organize book signing events. Now, life has taken me to Texas, and I am currently working at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, the most visited museum in Houston. I have decided that a graduate degree in Museum Studies will help advance me in a career field in which I am very passionate. For my graduate research, I would like to delve deeper into museum theory, work to fully understand how guests interact with objects, learn how curators create exhibitions, and research the capabilities of digital technologies in the galleries.

“Plastic,” an art instillation at the Museum of Modern Art, created by artist and choreographer Maria Hassabi, blurred the lines between dance and visual art. I had the pleasure of experiencing this exhibit on March 5th, 2016. “Plastic,” reinvigorated my artistic eye, and challenged my preconceived notions of art and choreography.

‘While artists and the art trade were in the business of presenting the new, this was a conceptual challenge for museums.’ (Altshuler, 2008, 15). Discuss the challenges that advanced artistic practice presented for museums in the late 19th and early 20th century.