I had such a wonderful time presenting at Macaulay Honors College’s annual STEAM Festival this past weekend! It was wonderful to see the works of art my peers in Seminar One chose to analyze, to learn from the creativity of Macaulay students across other campuses, and to hear the research presentations from Seminar Three students as well.

For my project, Aaron and I chose an untitled painting by Kazimir Malevich hanging on the 13th floor of Baruch College’s Newman Vertical Campus. The painting was an example of the Suprematism movement, and it depicted clean, geometric lines and shapes against a white background – only disrupted by the occasional burst of yellow. We picked it because it was designed to be timeless, and we knew that Baruch students would be able to continue to appreciate it for decades to come. The feedback we got from the audience at STEAM was very positive. Many people told us that they enjoyed the conversational tone of our audio guide, and they were intrigued by the infinite possibilities of interpretations of Malevich’s painting.

Other Seminar One students also did a phenomenal job. Outside of our class, it was so cool to see the scrapbooks, short films, posters, and photo-journals of other Macaulay students. They had very different assignments with respect to Arts in New York City, and I greatly appreciated their fresh perspectives. I also enjoyed hearing about their experiences in their seminar courses as well.

Since STEAM was a combination of both the arts and sciences, it made perfect sense to see research posters all around the Macaulay building. I loved getting to know members of Macaulay’s Class of 2021 through their presentations and hearing their reasoning for choosing the topics they did. I actually learned a fun fact from Dennis at the Hunter College campus about how the bright lights of New York that we all know and love, are actually affecting the migration patterns of birds because they are being thrown off course due to the excess of artificial light.