Today I visited the Whitney Museum of American Art in the West Village. There I observed many pieces that are primarily modern American art; ranging from sculptures to painting to interactive artworks. One that primarily caught my eye was an oil painting on a canvas by Elsie Driggs, who painted “Pittsburgh, 1927”. It is said that Driggs was inspired to make this painting by a childhood memory of Pittsburgh’s steel mills. When she returned twenty years later to capture the scene, she initially tried to paint the steel mills from the inside. Today the painting may seem to warn of the dangers of industrial pollution, yet Driggs did not have an oppositional agenda. She ended up basing the work on drawings she made from hillsides; later writing that she stared at the mills and told herself, “This shouldn’t be beautiful. But it is.” The way that this piece assisted me during my first semester at Baruch was it not only helped me do my Freshmen Seminar Blog, but also taught me a valuable lesson on learning to branch out into the city of New York. I have been a resident for so long and its been years since I’ve stepped foot into a Museum or festival. It also taught me to be more open to things at Baruch because the school has a lot to offer and could assist me if I just let myself become more aware of things by exploring from the inside, rather than looking from the outside, similarly to Driggs. Maybe I will find something beautiful too.
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