Being a CUNY students has a wide variety of benefits, one being free admissions to selected New York City museums. On Wednesday, I took the opportunity to take advantage of this benefit along with Stephy, Crystal, and Brian to the Whitney Museum of American Art.

To get to the Whitney Museum, we had to take the L train to the last stop, 8th Avenue, and walk a long twelve minutes before arriving. On our way, we had the opportunity to get a glimpse of The Highline, which was really close to where the Whitney Museum was located. To be admitted into the museum, we had to wait in line for our tickets, which the lady behind the booth nicely gave to us after having a look at our CUNY ID’s. We were suppose to go to the lower level of the Whitney Museum for coat check but accidently got on the elevator going up so we decided to just proceed with our journey.

We got off the third floor and quickly realized that it mainly consisted of meeting rooms for groups that decided to come and look at the art pieces in detail so we got back on the elevator for the eighth floor. The eighth floor was named Calder: Hypermobility which had many more art pieces but were not of our taste because the sculptures were too minimalistic and had little detail. We took a quick look around and decided to go to the floor below; Where We Are: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection 1900-1960. The seventh floor was more of our liking because it included paintings of all sorts that focused on how relationships, institutions, and activities shape our lives according to the artist’s perspective. The works of art were very intriguing because it covered war, peace, The Great Depression, recovery, social discord and recovery that happened over the course of six decades.

We also saw collections like “No One Exists Alone”; which focused on migration in America and the experiences of the artist as a child. We also saw “The Furniture of Home” which included oil paintings that represented the furniture found in your home and what they symbolize. We concluded our trip to the Whitney Museum with the AIDS collection, which showed how AIDS has affected society.

One piece that stood out to me the most was an oil painting of a man who was on the verge of death from AIDS laying on his bed. It was scary to know that a person could get to that point in their life and look so empty. The whole experience has made me appreciate art more and I will definitely be visiting more museums in the future.

In my eighteen years of living in New York City, the MET has been the museum that I have visited the most. In Middle School, school trips to the MET would common and I probably went three to four times a school year. Back then I was a child and didn’t really understand how I would benefit from a museum, and since Middle School I haven’t visited the MET more than once compared to the ten or so times I visited in a span of three years. The one time I did visit was during my sophomore year in High School, and not because I wanted to but because I had family over that wanted to and I was essentially forced to go. But I actually enjoyed it a bit that time, not like all the other times in Middle School. I always thought that I had seen it all and that’s why I found the MET boring but I was only using that as an excuse, which is why I chose and wanted to go to the MET this Thursday for this blog.

I went with my friend Rafal, who at first didn’t believe me that the admission tickets to get in were a penny because they were donation based. So he ended up paying a dollar for the ticket, but a dollar is still so little when compared to what the MET offers. As an extremely vast place we weren’t able to explore all of it, or most of it since we still had to get to get to English class later. But just the amount of sculptures that we first say upon entering was amazing. Many were broken, probably through wear and tear over hundreds and thousands of years which was crazy to imagine that I was staring at something created thousands of years ago. I consider myself to be a bit of a History buff, buff the art area of history was never really something I enjoyed, however going to the MET and reading about different sculptures and paintings was a lot of information. Especially the sculptures we saw at the start, many seemed and actually were from the Ancient Greek and Romand times, but while that was my guess you could have just as easily read about them and found an accurate date of when they were created. Now I know that a museum is another way to learn about history other than history class.

With a wide range of museums in New York City, intriguing exhibitions are offered in various fields. Among other museums, I chose the Whitney Museum of American Art. The Whitey Museum consists of American artworks mainly from the twentieth century and temporary exhibitions.

The Whitney building draws attention with its unique building structure. Upon entering, there are glass windows that allow people to grasp an insight of the large and spacious first floor with a gift shop filled with artistic souvenirs and a line to purchase tickets. The exhibitions are divided into three floors each with a different concept and theme. The sixth floor is the Calder exhibition portraying the theme of Hypermobility. Calder’s sculptures depict kineticism in which it was fascinating to see because unlike other exhibition with framed artworks, Calder uses sculpture to express his idea of movement into sculpture. Through this exhibition, I learned about Alexander Calder and his concept of hypermobility. Calder asserts in combining motion and his sculptures. He believes that if artworks can be composed of colors, then motions should also be included. It was impressive to witness Calder’s sculptures slowly spin and rotate on its own.

Unlike Calder’s exhibition, “An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1940–2017” provides historical context of political and social disputes in America. The exhibition greatly demonstrates Americans’ resistance towards wars in the 1950s. Out of all the artworks, Edward Kienholz’s “The Non-War Memorial” stood out to me the most. Instead of using a painting, Kiehholz expresses his idea by putting military uniforms on the floor symbolizing the dead soldiers to provoke a sensation of war terror.

Overall, I would recommend others to visit the Whitney Museum of American Art. It is fairly close to Baruch and the exhibitions are highly intriguing and inspiring.