I did not know that i was in for a surprise when I decided to go home for the weekend. I needed to get to the West Side and completely unintentionally I happened to be in the 59th street subway station transferring from the 6 to the Q.  As I turned a corner to walk up a flight of stairs, there it was; a HUGE mural of tiles colored in all of the basic colors. I remembered then that Professor Bergman had posted a blog about a new installment in the 59th St station.

 I'd have to say that my visit to Carnegie Hall (for the first time) was quite bizarre. As I approached Carnegie Hall with a bunch of classmates, we came upon multiple entrances. To our surprise, none of these entrances were the right ones. It took us about 10 minutes to figure out where to go and eventually, we met with Jeremy Geffen, the organizer of performances that take place in Carnegie Hall. I wasn't really interested in what he was telling me because I felt as if he wasn't really telling me much.

The China Festival at Carnegie Hall was an enjoyable experience. Although I don't play any instruments and the music at the concert wasn't anything that I put on my mp3 player, I was paying close attention to the performers and the way they were playing. The first pianist was boring me a bit in the beginning because he started off slow and somber. Then, suddenly, he hit a very fast "Tom and Jerry" pace. I noticed that he had a look of intense concentration throughout.

I have to admit that our meeting with the artistic director of Carnegie Hall was not quite what I had hoped it would be. He didn't really give much insight as to what his role is at Carnegie Hall, and I felt like he spent more time promoting the venue than he did expressing his love for his job or his appreciation for the arts. It was interesting to hear about the amount of planning that goes into creating events like the Chinese Festival, but I think I would've liked a more personal perspective on what it is like to have a career in the art world.

I remember last summer, I was in Paris, and I went to the Pompidou Center, a very odd building with infrastructure on the outside, painted in bright colors. There, I saw an exhibit on Kandinsky, which I liked a lot (and mentioned in my photography paper for this class). A couple of months later, back in New York City, I started to see advertisements for the same exhibit at the Guggenheim museum. I have been debating with myself on whether I should see the same exhibit again.