A couple friends and I decided to visit the School of Visual Arts not too far away from Baruch after our classes on Thursday. Finding it was a bit difficult but once we did we discovered that the school had an art exhibit in it with many art works as well as little descriptions on the sides. The art works were quite confusing to me because I wasn’t sure what was going on in them up until I read the description on the side which spoke of Shikumen which I had never heard of. “Shikumen came from the migration after the Small Swords Rebellion and the Taiping Revolution of 1853.” (Citing from one of the captions/descriptions for the artwork) It was a place that developed after rebellions and a war like state that started off very poor and then developed its own rich culture and built up from it. This place plays a very important role in Chinese history because of its background, development and new culture. Although all the art works presented seemed very chaotic, they did show a sort of beauty in the chaos that was going on and the war like state. The anarchy portrayed represents the freedom that those people were striving for and had finally reached when they formed Shikumen. I’m very glad I got to visit this Visual Arts center and view all of the Shikumen art as well as other pieces that had no relation to Shikumen but were very interesting, aesthetically pleasing and captivating to me. I think visiting this center was also very helpful considering I take art history and we are taught all about reading and analyzing art which I got to take into real life and try and utilize during this exhibit.