Category — Architecture/Place/Memorial

As soon as I walked up the subway stairs, I couldn’t take my eyes off of it, the Brooklyn Museum.

The contrast between the front portion’s Greek influence and the main lobby’s modernness contributed to the “art” of the museum. Not only does the museum contain art, it is art. Many people think that a museum is a mere vessel that contains art, but rarely do they acknowledge the actual architecture and the artistic thought process that goes into the bricks and mortar of the Brooklyn Museum. When I walked into the hall what immediately caught my eye, other than the enormous screen conveying the texts of the excited Macaulay youth, was the symmetry of the room and how it was set up. It was the perfect place to hang works of art. Wherever you look, you see art. Look up, the ceiling looks as if it belongs in the hall of a king. Look down, and you see tiles- but what’s under it? Lights, lights that illuminate the entire hall.

And then there are the paintings and sculptures. The  main attraction.

One of the first paintings my group visited was called St. Joseph and the Flowering Rod. We gravitated toward this painting mainly because of our group’s heavy influence from the Christian Church. That and the painting showed an emotion that just brought people to it. We analyzed the painting with our background in Christianity, but it proved to be difficult. Sometimes it is better just to look at a work objectively. We then switched to the art background that we gained from going to public school in Long Island. We looked at the brush strokes and how they coincided with the emotions that were meant to be conveyed in the painting. Every part of the painting is there for a reason. The mere placement of light can change the context of the story we create from a heavenly standpoint to an earthly, more secular standpoint.  Which was clearly the case in the painting. The lighting from above  created a sense of God looking down on him.that coupled with his emotion made it seem as if he was in an emotional battle with the Lord.

The museum was a great experience overall. Both the paintings and architecture are a must see not only for the people who live in Brooklyn but for the whole world.

The last time I had been to a museum was my sophomore year of high school. We went to the Met and I was bored to death by the constant rambling of my teacher. It’s like she was trying to prove to us that she knew history and that she was cultured. By the end of it, I realized I barely looked at any sculptures. We were only allowed to look at the ones she pointed out and talked about. It was difficult trying to tune her out and keep up with her pace. She constantly told us what she and others thought about them and felt was interesting. Sure, the insights were nice, but it didn’t give us room to think and figure anything out on our own.

The night at the Brooklyn Museum was the exact opposite of my previous experience. We were allowed to roam the exhibits open to us (I wish the middle eastern one was open!) at our own pace and leisure with people we chose to explore with. Not only could we look at any of the works of art we wanted to, but we could also try to figure them out for ourselves. Being pushed to discuss it forced us to view other perspectives and think critically. We also had to look at individual works in great detail, something I’ve never tried or had the time for. It was neat to be able to see everything close up and not have a chaperone pressure us by watching over us like a hawk. I enjoyed having the freedom to do as I please and getting to see and hang out with the other Macaulay students. The overall environment was also fun. Everyone was doing the same thing so we didn’t feel uncomfortable talking to one another or ourselves about art and it was interesting to see which groups veered to which paintings and sculptures. After exploring everything and completing our assignment, we were free to leave whenever and pick up free food on the way out! I also got to meet some new people and stay out of the house past my bedtime. ˆ_ˆ Even though it wasn’t a sleep over, it was a pretty gnarly experience over all. I think I may have even started to like museums.

P.S. That text-in-your-response-to-the-following-question thing in the beginning of the event was hilarious and way rad.

[quicktime]http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/ugoretz14/files/2014/09/Movie-on-9-8-14-at-10.06-PM.mov[/quicktime]

Brooklyn Museum of Art Entrance

When choosing Macaulay honors we were promised impressive events to begin to meet new people and to experience new things that many of us have not done before and if we have it is unlikely we did it in our free time. To begin these events the Macaulay Honors class of 2018 kicked off when we visited the Brooklyn museum of Art. Originally i was a bit wary with the idea of going to the museum; not because i dont like museums but because I dont truly think i know how to appreciate certain kinds of art. Prior to this event my criteria for looking at pictures was if it looked cool (Psychedelic like Jimi Hendrix) , or had a nice landscape of nature. However, when being put into a group that essentially required me to interact with people about some art that i have either only talked to a few previous times before or nothing at all it really opened my eyes about the cliche that a picture is really worth a thousand words so i really enjoyed the whole day and event.

**Disclaimer Night at the museum was a good movie i just dont like Ben Stiller except in the first meet the fockers movie and along came Polly**

To be completely honest, my reaction upon hearing about the “Night at the Museum” was not exactly a positive one. I thought of it as a drag, a hassle, and just another night to spend without my friends who chose other colleges. However, once I actually arrived at the museum, my perspective completely changed. I must admit that the enthusiasm of the Macaulay staff was quite contagious. I could sense the inviting energy from each professor and suddenly I realized that I was actually happy to be here. While having little experience with analyzing art, I didn’t have any personal assurance that I would be able to participate in a 6-sided conversation. I’m pretty sure all the times that I have visited museums were not by choice and were simply school trips. On these school outings, I didn’t really have an incentive to appreciate the art. The only art I knew was “arts and crafts,” and to 10 year old me, the artists in these museums didn’t really understand that concept. So, yeah, you could pretty much call me a “museum virgin.” Being one, I couldn’t help but worry that I would have nothing to say and wouldn’t be able to contribute any interesting input. Putting this fright behind me, I sat in my seat and faced 500 other brains who have probably had way more art experiences than I have.

As we lined up to collect our tape recorders, I joined a group of 6 students who pretty much shared the same enthusiasm as me. We were nervous how our recordings would come out and if we would even be able to say anything at all. When we first started recording our conversations, we found that:

1) we were clearly talking over and interrupting one another

2) and we were trying so hard to interpret the art that it came off forced and unoriginal

However, as we continued through the maze of this museum, we found that our patterns drastically changed. We waited patiently for our group members to finish speaking before jumping in with our own input. We also started asking more intriguing questions; these questions weren’t just directed towards each other, but also toward the artist. We constantly asked: “Why would he do that?!” and “What do you think he was feeling when painting/sculpting this?” We carried conversations of both agreement and disagreement and found beauty in art’s debatable factors.  As a group, we shared a variety of emotions throughout this experience, such as anger, happiness, sadness, and confusion. In a way, this experience helped us bond and get to know each other a lot more than we would in class. It also helped me to slowly come out of my shell and be able to speak freely without any doubts in my opinions. I realized that it was alright having little experience with something like this because there’s a first for everything.

Analyzing art started to feel natural to me. It’s about speaking what’s simply on your mind and, at the same time, accessing a part of your brain that you don’t do on a daily basis. I have definitely come to appreciate this activity and am most definitely no longer a “museum virgin.” I sincerely look forward to the upcoming events at museums!

As I try to come up with a concise, eye-catching introductory statement, I’m forced to think about what I truly gained from the Night at the Museum in just a few words. But now that I took a copout route, I don’t have to do that anymore. I will, instead, begin by saying that I like art. I like observing things, anything, and thinking about them. Analyzing things has always been a fun mind game for me. The Night at the Museum was different though; I didn’t just have to think, I had to converse.

I was in a group of people I had never met before and I didn’t know how we’d get along, if things would flow easily. Conversation isn’t always easy. But I soon discovered that conversation about art is. One work of art contains so many conversation topics, from the technical details of the brush strokes and line placements to the greater messages those lines and strokes convey. There’s a history conversation latent in the clothes the subject wears and a psychological one in the expression on her face. Conversation flowed naturally, and that was exciting. Containing thoughts to my head isn’t as fun as letting them flow and bounce off of others’ ideas, each one building on top of another, creating stronger concepts and analyses. Maybe in real life I have very little in common with those five people. But in the museum, those differences aren’t noticed. And if they are, it only enhances our collective observation of the work. Each person looks at the same work of art with a different eye, and allows us to see a different aspect that we couldn’t have seen on our own. That’s why art is beautiful.

I’m trying to think of one work that really stood out to me, but I don’t have one specific one that comes to mind. The forced conversations made each work we discussed stand out in my mind when they hadn’t before. Talking about something really made me just like it better. And I think that’s awesome.

Art makes you think. Museums make you discuss the art that makes you think. By physically speaking out loud with others, a completely new world is open to the observer. And it serves as great bonding when small talk just doesn’t cut it.

So when I first heard about the “Macaulay Night at the Museum” I thought we were having a sleepover. I honestly believed the entire 400+ Macaulay students were going to bring sleeping bags and camp out underneath the paintings of Van Gogh and watch the cinema classic  that is “Night at the Museum.” I was quickly informed that my feetie pajamas would not be  necessary, and the event was redefined to me. Regardless of a sleepover or not I was excited to attend to event,  and once it was over I was more interested in art than I was before.

I liked how we were free to explore the museum and pick our own pieces of art to discuss.I saw certain groups gravitating towards the more obscure interesting works, while others wanted to discuss the more classical and traditional paintings. The Egyptian exhibit was my favorite out of all of them because the art itself was created for some purpose beyond simple aesthetics, and I could see how it was crafted by a human hand hundreds of years prior. The sarcophagi in my opinion were so cool and intricate that I probably could have spent the majority of the night looking at them. I had a fairly large group of six individuals, but we broke up into groups of three to discuss two different art pieces. My threesome observed an African tribal costume of fertility, and the other looked at a painting that symbolized the French Revolution (Vive la France!). At first the tape recorder was awkward to use, and there was a brief moment of panic where I thought I erased the entire six minute conversation, but after we all got into the art I found that the pressure of having something to say into the mic just fell away. I wished I had more time to look around the museum and talk to the other students because personally I didn’t get to meet as many people as I wanted to.  There were a lot of different styles of art that I didn’t know existed and I found myself constantly questioning how someone had the idea to make this? What inspired them, or what were they thinking when they created this work? I will look forward to other events like this, especially if it involves art because I now know how to actually talk about the work without trying to sound like an art critic. I heard a lot of other students saying that they want to tour the museum again on their own time to explore more and I feel the same way.

So in sum, I enjoyed my night at the museum even though it wasn’t a sleepover.