Instead of joining any of the clubs on Thursday, my art history professor organized a surprises museum trip with two tour buses for the whole class. I was really excited for this first trip in college, even though we have an assignment to finish after the museum tour. On the way to the destination, the buses passed the 911 Memorial and World Trade Center, where our professor Gail Levin has a brief introduction including the reminder of our assignment on 911 Memorial too. The whole class finally know the destination until we arrive at the yard of Jewish Heritage Museum. Begin with the nearly hundreds students break into several small groups with a specific professional guide, we begin our trip to the museum.
The museum is a memorial to the past and encouragement for the future generation. As I found one of the most iconic artworks present in the Jewish Heritage Museum is “Garden of Stones” by Andy Goldworthy. This type of the artwork isn’t the one we commonly see in the real life of painting or sculpture, it is a memorial artwork that combines with the real-life material with deepening meaning. The symbolized of the tree grow out of the rock is strongly represent the survivor of Jewish people after the Holocaust. Think the point of artists trying to present that originally, it is impossible for tree grows out of a rock, which represents the hopelessness of Jewish people during WW2. The possibility of a tree grows out of the tree symbolized the rebirth of the Jews people, and served as encouragement for them to move on to a new life. Therefore the strong symbolic of this artwork gave me a deep impression towards the Jews history and art.
At the end of the museum trip, the staff f the museum introduce us a victim and someone who experience Holocaust at her younger age. Surprisingly, she was one of the Baruch graduate students. Her vivid speech gives us more knowledge and background information for people who are suffering during the Holocaust, even though for people who did not attend concentration camp. Overall the museum trip is meaningful, for letting us understand the Jewish people’s life before and after the war, and realized the crucial of the war in any country’s history.