For my Final Blog post, I would like to talk about a recent class trip which my English block took to the Whitney. I will also discuss Baruch voices, the choice of choosing what to talk about was rather a difficult task since both of the academic life visits were one of my favorite.
“No to racists. No to Fascists. No to taxes funding racists and fascists. No mercy for rapists. No pity for bigots. No forgiveness for nativists. No to all of those. No hope without rage. No rage without teeth. No separate peace. No easy feat. No to bounds by genders. No to clickbait as a culture. No to news as truths. No to art as untruths. No anti-Semitic anything. No Islamophobia anything. No progress without others. No meaning without meaning.” Followed by “No means no,” repeated four times. Just read that, line after line, and let it sink in. That’s what you have to do when each line is so powerful and they come together as a whole as these very lines did. That’s what the Whitney Museum did, it plastered those lines all over the entryway making your eyes draw to the plain white walls with distinct black lettering. The protest exhibits on the 6th floor of the museum may be the closest thing to a well-rounded well-connected exhibit as it gets. Attending the Museum School, and traveling every Wednesday to all the attractions NYC has to offer, going on a museum trip was nothing new to me. However, The Whitney was a brand-new experience.
Overall, the exhibit was extremely thought to provoke, and many of the works included were surreal. It made one see, that although many of these are a thing of a past, they very much exist today. The Whitney incorporated this in a way that is not corny, such as when our favorite T.V shows try incredibly hard to implement real-world issues, but in a way that you understand what you are seeing. This was not an ordinary “oil on canvas,” but rather “then and now,” and a “how far did we come, and how much further do we need to go.”
Now let’s move on to Baruch voices. Let’s just say, each FRO class did a wonderful job choosing someone to represent them. Some of the monologues were passionate, sad, powerful, funny— it was like a whirlwind of emotions. Literally, ask Salma, we all were on edge. A particular favorite of mine was the guy who made his monologue on the iconic SpongeBob scene, but only a true SpongeBob fan would know what the scene is early in the speech. There was also this saddening breathtaking monologue that ended up taking us by surprise when the man reading it said it was made up. That one really got to me. Overall, I’m so happy I went to Baruch voices, it was a great time. Shout out to Flint by the way.
