Author Archives: Keith Stegner

Museum Websites

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The website for the Metropolitan Museum of Art recently underwent a major overhaul. Edward Rothstein reviews the new site in his New York Times article “From Met Museum, Virtual Virtue.” Overall, Rothstein does a good job with his article. First, he describes the new site, which has a very simplistic design with black and gray banners and shows off the museum’s many collections. He continues his review with an analysis of this specific website as well as the role of websites for museums.

Rothstein points out the many things he likes about the new website and uses other websites as examples of his ideas. For example, he explains how the amount of information about the objects included on the site is just right, calling the site “encyclopedic.” He presents the websites for the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Louvre as examples of websites that didn’t do this quite as well as the Met did. Another aspect of the website for the Met that Rothstein liked was the way the website associates itself with the museum rather than competing with it. The simplistic design of the website doesn’t try to evoke sensations about the museum and the site includes interactive maps to direct people to the actual exhibits and objects in the museum building. Again, he provides an example of a website that is much weaker in this area, this time using the Museum of Modern Art’s site, which makes you feel “a sense of excitement and variety.”

The ideas that Rothstein proposes and the examples he uses help the reader to think about the role of a museum’s website. They make me wonder about how the websites impact the museums and their visitors. Is it better to see the objects in the museum in person or be able to look at images of them from anywhere? Does putting everything in the museum online make people less motivated to visit the physical museum building? How could this impact the experience? If less people decide to go to the museum because they can see it online, would this be good or bad for the experience of the people that do go to the museum? Is a less crowded museum better or is the social aspect in which people are responding to the objects in the museum together and seeing each others responses a part of the experience? I believe that putting more of a museum online will detract from the meuseum itself. However, I do think that the answers to many of these questions depend on the way the websites and museums are designed and how they work together. If they are designed to go together well, as Rothstein believes the Met and its website are, then people will look to both and there will be the impact could even be positive.

Fate in Antigone

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Fate is an important part of many tragedies. The lives of the characters have a set end and there are usually hints as to what this end will be and when it will occur. Often, the characters are able to recognize their fate and respond to it. Sometimes, characters accept their fate because it is important to them or they believe it is inevitable.

In the case of Antigone, the play begins with a discussion about burying Polyneices’ body. Antigone and Ismene talk about the consequences of this act, which has been made illegal, as well as the reasons it is necessary. This discussion lays out Antigone’s fate as she decides to bury her brother and face the consequences. She fully understands her fate and accepts it. She believes following her fate set by the gods is more important than following a law set by the king. She informs her sister, who has decided to follow the law, that she should “set [her] own fate in order.”

Throughout the play, Antigone follows her fate. She buries Polyneices and is caught by guards. She is brought to Creon and admits to her crime. The acceptance of her fate is evident when, facing a punishment of death, she says “my fate prompts no tears.” Antigone accepts what she believes is inevitable by committing suicide with her fiance. This recognition and acceptance of fate is an important part of Antigone, as well as many other tragedies.

Antigone was not the only character of the play with a fate that she lived up to. For example, Creon is destined to be alone after his decisions lead to the deaths of almost everyone around him. He ignores the consequences of his actions at first and attempts to correct his mistakes but not until it is too late. By the time he decides to accept that this is his fate and attempt to avoid it by conceding, Antigone and Haemon have already killed themselves. His reluctance to listen to others about his fate throughout most of the play resulted in it becoming his reality.

For the characters of Antigone, their fates turn out to be inevitable, whether it is because they accepted this fate and allowed it to come true or refused to acknowledge it until it was too late.

I.B.M.’s “Think” Exhibition

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A trend that I have noticed in many current exhibitions is the theme of technology. In a previous post I discussed MoMA’s “Talk To Me.” The New York Times Article “Data as Art, as Science, as a Reason for Being” by Edward Rothstein describes the I.B.M. “THINK” exhibit.  This exhibit, according to the arcticle, showcases the different technologies of the company’s past and its ideas for the future. It uses numerous screens to show off diffent things about I.B.M. and technology. It is in Lincoln Center from September 23 to October 23 and is free but requires tickets for timed sessions.

Rothstein’s review of the exhibition is effective because it first describes the exhibit, telling the audience what it is about, then goes on to critique it. He offers suggestions of things it could have done better. He does make the point that the exhibition is sh. His critique gives off the impression that the exhibit didn’t live up to its potential but it was still very good. Although the review sugeested some weak aspects of the exhibition, it did make me feel intrigued about it.

Visual Diary

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I interviewed my mom about her childhood and the neighborhood she grew up in.

“My family was the typical family that you saw in the TV shows from the fifties and early sixties. My father went to college, thanks to the GI Bill, and worked as a manufacturing engineer. My mother was a homemaker who raised five children into responsible adults. We all sat down to eat as a family at 5:00 pm.”

“I grew up in the Town of Poughkeepsie, NY, which is about halfway between Manhattan and Albany. . My neighborhood was also like a fifties and early sixties TV show. It was very suburban, middle-class.”

“I hadn’t noticed it while growing up, but we lived in a rather segregated area. I had never given it any thought until I saw the Black students sitting separately at a table in the cafeteria. It gave me pause to think that they were separated from the rest of the school merely because of the color of their skin and for no other reason.”

“I started to think about the races — something I did not do much of because we were so segregated. The other thing I thought about was why we were so overwhelmingly white in the community in which I grew up. How did it get that way?”

She concluded the interview with the advice that “keeping an open mind and looking at situations from different perspectives will help you to better understand our racial and ethnic differences. Just going to school in NYC is opening you up to much more diversity than you would ever experience living anywhere in Dutchess County.”

Talk to Me

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The Museum of Modern Art is a museum that always has many interesting works and exhibits. At the moment, the exhibit that sounds the most fascinating is the “Talk To Me” exhibit, which shows off the many ways that people communicate. It includes the many objects and technologies that we interact with, showing off the relationship between humans and these objects. The exhibit also shows the ways that objects and interfaces are designed, stressing the ways the design influences the way we understand and interact with the objects as well as the way our interactions influence the design. Included in the exhibit are things we may know and use frequently as well as things we have never seen before.

Location

MoMA,  11 West 53 Street

When

Now until November 7, 2011

Believing and Doubting

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In the article “‘Sleep No More,’ but Move Nonstop,” Gia Kourlas writes a strong review of the play “Sleep No More.” The article opens with a brief description of the play that explains how much movement is involved. This description gives the reader a good understanding of what the play is about and what the audience experiences watching it. The article goes on to include quotes from people involved in the play then respond to the ideas proposed in the quotes, giving the reader a second opinion with more information. This method makes the article seem valid and thoughtful, making it a strong review.

Ben Brantley reviews “Cymbeline” in a way that is not as strong in “Simply Shakespeare, No Tangled Web.” He begins his article with a reference to “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” that jokes about the problems faced by both plays. This beginning fails to properly introduce the play that Brantley is actually reviewing. Throughout the rest of the review, Brantley describes the play in a way that feels too positive. He doesn’t discuss any negative aspects of the play. Instead, he points out things that may seem to be bad but either explains why he actually liked them or doesn’t explain them at all. For example, he writes that “despite the doubling, tripling and quadrupling of roles, I have never seen a “Cymbeline” as easy to follow as this one.” The topic of actors with multiple roles is one that he does not talk about very much. He touches on it slightly more before this quote, simply describing the situation, but he never talks about possible negative impacts of it. Instead, he simply shakes of the idea with the quote, saying that it is not an issue. Brantley’s writing style and method make his review seem as if it is not very serious and lacks any negativity, something that is very important in a review.

Remembrance in the two stories

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While both Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close use remembrance to help the reader understand the characters, they use it in different ways and for different reasons. Lahiri uses remembrance to show how different environments and cultures affected the members of the Ganguli family. Jonathan Safran Foer’s use of remembrance involves the impact of tragic historical events on the lives of the characters in his novel.

In The Namesake, Ashima and Ashoke move to the United States from India and their family must try to find the right balance between the two different cultures in their lives. Ashima and Ashoke, having grown up in India, miss parts of its culture while they are in America. Their memories of the members their families and many aspects of their life and culture in India provide them with a source of comfort as they try to accept their lives in a new land. Their children, on the other hand, are confused about what their own culture is. It is only through many different experiences and remembering events from his family’s past that Gogol is able to find the right balance for himself. Remembrance allows the members of the family to look back and adapt their lifestyle to the right balance of the two cultures and allows them to keep parts of their old lives that they miss close to their hearts.

In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Oskar Schell must face the tragedy of his father’s death in the September 11 terrorist attacks. He spends the entire novel trying to remember his father and searching for someone who can tell him more about his father. Throughout his journey he meets many people and a number of them have experienced losses or other calamities as well. They talk about their experiences and attempt to move on with their lives. One of the people Oskar meets is a man from his building who lost his wife and has not left his apartment since. After listening to stories about the man’s life, many of which involve his wife, Oskar convinces the man to leave his apartment for the first time in twenty-four years to accompany him on his journey. The novel also includes the stories of Oskar’s grandparents, who lost their families in the bombing of Dresden. Oskar’s grandfather lost the love of his life, the sister of Oskar’s grandmother. The two of them spend their lives remembering the horrific events as well as those that they lost. By the end of the novel, remembrance allows Oskar and his grandparents to accept the deaths that have impacted them so profoundly.

Both books portray the ways in which remembrance can allow people to change and move on but also keep a part of their old culture or loved ones with them. They invoke remembrance of both cultural experiences and tragic experiences to allow the reader to understand the characters and the changes they go through in the novels.

I Remember

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Reading about the many trips made by the Ganguli family in The Namesake, as well as the tales of travel that their friends told them, reminded me of my experience traveling to London. It was a trip with my school that was being offered during spring break to the tenth grade class as well as a few seniors who helped with chaperoning. My sister was one of those seniors, which was fine with me because it was my first time going on a trip to another country and I spent most of it on my own with my friends anyway.

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of my trip, especially while reading about the Ganguli’s journeys, is the flight and the first day. We left New York in the middle of the day but I had to be up somewhat early to go to the school then to the airport. We flew with Virgin Atlantic and they had in flight entertainment systems for each seat with a bunch of new movies that we could watch for free. I ended up spending the entire flight watching some of these movies rather than sleeping. This was probably not the best idea because the plane landed in London at six in the morning and we spent the entire day touring the city. Of course, by the end of the day, I was exhausted!

The rest of the trip, however, was extremely fun and the weather was surprisingly nice. After months of being told how much it rains in London and that the weather is always bad, we had a week full of warm and sunny days. Meanwhile, New York was experiencing a week of clouds and rain.

Of course it was an eventful trip and I could write much more about it, but for this assignment, it’s probably better to keep it at least a little bit brief and just focus on the parts I thought of while reading the novel.

Introduction

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Me in Disney World over the summer

Hey everyone! My name is Keith Stegner. I was born on Long Island, where most of my dad’s family lives, but my family moved upstate when I was little. I grew up in a town about half an hour from Poughkeepsie. I had come here to New York City quite a few times throughout my life, sometimes for school, sometimes with family, and sometimes with friends.

When it came time to choose a college, I knew I wanted to come here because I love the city and it is just the right distance so I can live away from home but can easily go back whenever I want. After spending my life in the country, I knew I wanted to get away to the city, where things are a bit busier and there are fewer trees and more buildings. I am living at the EHS New Yorker Residence, which I moved into just before the hurricane came.

I like computers as well as TV and movies. A few of my favorite shows are Modern Family, Bones, Family Guy, and South Park, although there are many more. I can never think of a favorite movie because there are too many for me to pick just one or even a few. I am a huge fan of The Sims. I have every game in the Sims 2 series and all but one in the first series, although I haven’t bought any Sims 3 games. I also like to take pictures and I took a graphic design class in high school that I really enjoyed.

I love to travel. So far the only other country I’ve been to is England (unless you count about half an hour in Canada at Niagara Falls) but I hope to add many more to that list in the future. However, I have traveled quite a bit along the east coast. Also, I went to Disney World for the fifth time this summer. Most of my relatives on my mom’s side are in the Disney Vacation Club and go almost every year so we join them every few years.

So far I have been enjoying my college experience and I can’t wait to get to know everyone better!