On October 26th, I visited the Museum of Jewish Heritage with my Art History class. I’ve been to this museum a couple of times before but this trip showed me the art side of all the exhibits. We took school buses to get to the museum and as we got off all you could hear was the water fountains outside of the place, it was so peaceful. I loved my experience there. With it being a living memorial for the Holocaust a lot of the art works we saw were of high emotion and very symbolic. In the photo, I’m standing in front of a bronze sculpture called The Flame by Nathan Rapoport which was made as a tribute for all those who died or made it in that difficult time. It’s a sculpture that represents how it feels to be truly terrified. It shows hope where the couple is hugging and strength where the man is fighting. Another really inspirational art work we saw was The Garden of Stones by Andy Goldsworthy which is an installation where trees grow out from rocks or boulders. It really spoke to me because it’s symbolic of life going one even under the harshest conditions. There are people who survived and are some of the toughest and strongest people among us even after such a terrible injustice. The artwork teaches us that life goes on and you just need to fight no matter the circumstances. At the end of the trip there was an old Baruch graduate that spoke to us. She is a Holocaust survivor and she shared her story with us. She was the only one of her family who’s now alive and it took great strength to get up and tell a story that reminded her of all the bad that happened. It was sad but I felt proud to hear the story. It’s an event that everyone should learn about so that we never forget what happened and never let it happen again.
The event helped a lot in regard to me understanding art and art history. I was able to connect terms we learned in class with art work that I personally saw at the museum. This event helped me revisit my heritage and that’s something that’s very important to me. As a freshman, I thought that getting involved in extracurriculars that are significant to me would be difficult but I joined Baruch’s Hillel, the Jewish club, so that I can better get in touch with my culture and religion and this trip helped me with that. I’m very glad my Professor took us.
