Author: Salma Ali

The STEAM Festival was a fun experience that helped bring together all the Macaulay students from different campuses. It was interesting to see all the projects that other students worked on throughout the year and compare to the assignments we did in our own Macaulay class. Although it was slightly disorganized and disoriented, I felt as though overall it a nice gathering. The makers workshop was really nice and students were able to create pins and magnets. Also viewing the Macaulay 3 projects was a nice foreshadow to the types of projects we will do next year.

The exhibit at the Rubin museum was fascinating. The tour guide was very knowledgable and her attitude allowed my experience to be that much more interesting. The exhibit had different rooms and sections and they were all impressive. One of my favorite parts was the “Olm” room. It was a calming room that recorded visitors saying “olm” and put an entire tape together. Closing your eyes and clearing your mind was incredible and allowed me to renew myself. Overall, the museum was so fun to visit and I would definitely  visit again in the near future.

As I said before, without the Macaulay Program, I’d never find myself going to an Opera performance and actually enjoying it. The experience was absolutely incredible and I would willingly go again. The storyline of this show was deep and dark however it was very interesting and beautiful. I focused on the vocals and my goodness were the vocals something special. We were sitting extremely far from the stage and were able to clearly hear the vocals of all the performers clearly. The best part, they didn’t even wear microphones. My favorite character who had the best voice was Liu. She was absolutely beautiful and her voice was breathtaking. I’m not very familiar with vocal names but I believe that Liu and Turandot had soprano vocals and the men with more deep vocals. Overall the performance was an incredible experience.

What an incredible show!!!! This performance was absolutely amazing and every minute of it was entertaining and hilarious. I am so thankful for the Macaulay program for expanding our boundaries to see shows like Torch Song that I most like would never have gone to on my own time. This performance was filled with emotions and laughter and the actors were AMAZING! I focused on the venue of the performance. The stage was located off Broadway at Second Stage theater. It was a small venue that was completely filled. At first I thought the stage was rather small compared to a Broadway stage, but since there were limited characters and different stage settings, it was actually spacious and beautiful. The characters were fantastic and I would absolutely recommend this show for the future.

Although our experience at MoMA was very rushed, we were still able to see Rauschenberg’s greatest pieces. The taxidermy goat was incredible. The story behind it was just a creative artist who thought putting a tire around goat would represent art without any hidden message. It was so cool to see in person along with his other creative pieces. A quote from him says, “I don’t want a picture to look like something it isn’t. I want it to look like something it is.” I absolutely loved it because some artists leave a painting with a hidden message for the audience to decipher, but Rauschenberg was very straight forward with his work. Another piece I loved was the tire marks on the long strand of paper that a car ran over with ink on the tire. His pieces are creative and intriguing.

Brooklyn Museum: “A Storm in the Rocky Mountains”

This stunning work of art by Albert Bierstadt took my breath away when first laid eyes on it. I had been wandering around the museum for quite a while now looking for my “it” piece. When I walked into the room that contained this piece of art work, I was shocked at the beauty of the scenery and how a painting can so accurately represent such a realistic view. When I took a step back and looked again, I paid close attention to the small detail and I was even more taken back by the exquisiteness and refinement. To summarize the description, it said that Bierstadt was a skilled showman and he took the Rocky Mountains and exaggerated its scale and introduced dramatic weather to thrill his audience. Surely it is exactly that, thrilling. The dramatic weather is represented with a lot of dark contrast, but a shining ray of sunlight is depicted and I interpreted it as a silver lining in life. There were also small storylines taking place with the natives and the horses running away from the falling trees in the forest. This piece was incredibly detailed and was my favorite piece at the Brooklyn Museum.