I have never been to a museum on my own time. Every time that I have gone, it has been a school or program related trip. Now that I got a chance to visit the MoMa on my own time, it was a completely different experience. No longer was I being guided to a certain section of the museum or being told what I was looking at. I would usually just cruise around the different floors and just slightly look at the different art pieces without really acknowledging what was in front of me. After reading the Berger and Barnett chapters, I gained a lot of new knowledge on some ways to analyze art and interpret it.

One concept I used while I was looking at the art pieces in the MoMa was the concept of form and content. In the reading Barnett says, “such things as the size of the work, the kinds of brush strokes in a painting, and the surface texture of a sculpture – is part of the meaning (52-53). When I was looking at the different art pieces I did not just simply focus on what the painting had, but I actually also looked at how big or small the painting was and the different techniques that were used to make it. For example, while I was looking at the painting The Poet Max Herrmann-Neisse by George Grosz, I did not just simply look at the man in the painting, but I went beyond that and noticed all the different details that the painting had. This told me that this painting was trying to express not just a man, but rather it was trying to tell us something more about the man with all the detail that was included.

Another thing I kept in mind while I was looking at all the different art pieces was that no interpretation of art is wrong. Both Berger and Barnett discuss that everybody interprets art differently and it is up to the person who views the art to interpret what is going on. Berger mentions that what we see is “the relation between things and ourselves (9)”. Therefore, he is trying to say that no matter what the artist’s intention is, the meaning of the art depends on the person viewing it and what the person can relate it to. For example, while I was looking at the art piece Retrospective Bust of a Woman by Salvador Dali I related it to the difference in gender equality and how women are seen as being less of men, so to me this painting had to do a lot with the role of women in society. To anybody else this does not have to be the case, but to me it is what it seemed like. This goes to show that art can have many different interpretations. The artist could have had a specific intention, but what the viewer actually perceives is what is important. While visiting the MoMa, I was very open minded and ready to see art through a different lens.