Today I spoke with my therapist and reflected on our ten days in NYC. I told her about the experiences I had in the big city and about all the artwork I had seen. I told her about the group of individuals that I bonded with throughout the ten days. What stood out to me most about the trip was our ability to talk about art, as art or art history students. I felt we had a common ground to discuss the artwork and to appreciate it with a similar perspective as students who appreciate art. It felt nice to have a group of people to see and talk about art with, because back home, I don’t really have that. It was quite nice to come into this class as almost strangers, to becoming roommates in a twelve person room, to becoming friends with a common experience.

Being in NYC reassured me about my artwork and my experiences in my courses. NYC and my classmates reassured me that I as well as my artwork are constantly evolving, and will continue to evolve as time goes on. Things can only go up from here. Things can only get better. Cheers to the first Metro Art Access class!

Ending with the Cloisters were a great way to bring our museum journey to an end. I never thought I would become so excited about Medieval artwork, until I experience the Cloisters and its Unicorn Tapestries. The Tapestries told the story of the hunt of the mythical Unicorn. Nathaniel our guide brought us around the room to each Tapestry and told us the background of each Tapestry panel. The first began with the release of the Unicorn, and the hunt beginning. As we moved around the room, the Unicorn grew tired and the hunters drew closer. The Unicorn is shown wounding one of the hunter’s hounds and kicking on in the stomach. The capture of the Unicorn is later shown by using a beautiful woman to lure itself to sacrifice itself for the sake of the woman. The last panel shows the Unicorn happy in captivity.

One point that our guide Nathaniel made was the relation between the Unicorn Tapestries and the story of Jesus Christ. The image of the Unicorn with twelve men in the garden, the possibility of the Unicorn’s rebirth in the last Tapestry, and other religious images that he outlined blew my mind. 

Basquiat’s exhibition was very fulfilling to see at the Brooklyn Museum. It reaffirmed that anyone can thrive in what they are doing if there is passion involved. A quote from Basquiat stated that he “cross[ed] out words so [we] will see them more. The fact that they are obscured makes [us] want to read them.” I found this quote to be true, because every time he had words crossed out, scratched out, or were somehow harder to read, i tried harder to read the words underneath and wanted to understand why the words were crossed out in the first place. I wanted to understand his purpose. and art is art.

I can’t say I necessarily enjoyed walking through the memorial museum, but it was a definite experience that was much needed while in NYC. I did not know what to expect from the museum, and I wasn’t sure if I would feel connected to the events at all. I was in third grade during the 9/11 attacks, and can only recall going home from school and watching the news in my living room. I personally do not know anyone directly connected to the events that day, but I was surprised at the response I had walking through the museum.

Hearing the first hand testimonies of the events and seeing the reaction photos of those in New York hit me pretty hard. I was surprised at how much the photos and words of others recalling the events affected me. What got to me the most was the small room with photos of those on the top floors of the towers who chose to take their own lives by jumping to their deaths. The people in the photos were unrecognizable and blurry. One description told the story of a woman who held down her dress during her last moments of life before jumping from the towers. I choked back tears reading the descriptions. The photos in the museum reminded me of the photos in the New Museum by Sarah Charlesworth, which showed stills of people falling from buildings, prior to the 9/11 attacks.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Bruce Nauman’s Performance Corridor in the exhibition space. I had recently learned about Bruce Nauman and his work in Barbara Miller’s Art and Tech class this past Spring Quarter. Since the quarter ended, I had become attached to his surveillance pieces. Kameron and I spent a good minute running down the corridors and figuring out which cameras were projected onto what televisions. I spent most of the time laughing and flailing my arms. The first long corridor had two televisions at the end which projected me walking toward the televisions, but viewed from the back. It was as if I was walking further away from myself. The next camera was pointed out from the second corridor, and was shown at a television off to the side of the corridor, so I could not fully see myself when in full view of the camera. This gave me a sense of frustration because I felt like I was being watched and at the same time, unable to see myself. It gave me a sense of “dislocation,” as if I was denied to fully understand my surroundings. There was a third television that showed us what a moving camera was seeing, but we could not locate the third camera. We ended up asking one of the gallery attendants where the third camera was – she told us she had wondered the same thing when she first saw the exhibition, and that the third camera was hidden in a secret closet, not accessible to the public. Bruce Nauman, you sneaky man.

Sol LeWitt’s Drawing Series in the Dia:Beacon blew me away at how meticulous and simple they were. His use of graphite and colored graphite blew me away with his use of line work and angles. I felt like I was taken back to my third year high school’s geometry class. I found his simple instructions of “ten thousand straight lines, and ten thousand not straight lines” to be quite humorous. While the description seems simple as that, each of his wall drawings were fully thought out before hand, which he compared to “musical scores.” Everything thought out in the mind of LeWitt was translated onto the wall, as precise as its original conception. I also liked that there were codes for each wall as well, to help the viewer understand the final drawings on the walls. I saw these codes as formulas for the final products.

Wael Shawky’s Cabaret Crusades surprised me when I walked into the small theatre. I knew very little about the crusades at the top of my head and the film being in a different language led me to scramble to understand the context of what I walked into. Despite the initial language barrier (there were subtitles) and little background knowledge, the film drew me in and kept me in my seat for longer than I expted. The glass marionettes, handmade by glassblowers from Venice were mesmerizing and incredibly detailed. The marionettes were controlled humorously and were meticulously animated to the narration. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the marionettes were much larger in person than I initially imagined. Each marionette’s mouth and eyes were controlled individually – I laughed every time I could hear the clinking of the eyes and mouth. With the number of attachments on each of the marionettes, it looked like controlling them was not an easy task. If we had had more time in PS1, I would have sat through the entire film.

marionette photo via momaps1.org