Freshman Seminar Fall 17 LC06

        On Monday, October 9th, my friend and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It is the largest museum in the U.S and it’s the second most visited museum in the world. It was my second time to visit the Met because it is gigantic, I don’t think one is able to view all millions of works for just one time visit. As you enter the museum, you place yourself into an ancient world.
There was a long line alongside the street waiting for the museum to open, and visitors are from all over the world. Luckily, we arrived at there early, so within few minutes, we got into the museum immediately. The first section we saw is the European paintings, there are thousands of paintings hang on the wall that make you dazzled. Although most of them are not that famous, you can still see that European life in ancient time is depicted through these paintings vividly. To appreciate an art is not to see its popularity, but to understand and learn the meanings and purposes of this particular piece. The second section we saw is the Asian Art department, which holds more than 35000 pieces, every Asian civilization is represented in the Met’s Asian department, and the pieces on display include every type of decorative art, from painting and printmaking to sculpture and metalworking. I was quite aggressive when I saw so many Chinese cultural relics, including Chinese calligraphy and painting, handcraft, sculpture… are displayed in America. I thought they stole them from China! But after a while, I realized that there is no stealing when we talk about a museum, museum carrier of art which bears the responsibility of protecting the arts, introducing the history, and spreading the cultures.
I highly recommend you to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it is really comprehensive and it will be an amazing and educating place to go if you are in NY.

During the weekend, I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art located in Upper East side of NYC. The MET is one of the world’s largest and finest art museums. Its collection includes more than two million works of art spanning five thousand years of world culture, from prehistory to the present. There is a particular piece of art attracted me. A pottery from Tang Dynasty of ancient China.

“SHE”, a “Figure of a Seated Court Lady”, was made during the 8 century in China, however, due to the large amount of pottery arts were produced during that period of time, the artist who made this classic piece of art is unknown. It’s a very charming pottery figure at the Imperial Court of the Tang Dynasty, of a young lady, meant to be buried with the deceased to keep him or her company, and to entertain them. Things like this were made actually in fairly large quantity, however, at the same time they were finished individually. Each one of them may have an individual character. This tells us about a particular period of time, the so-called Golden Age of the Tang Dynasty when China had constant and frequent contact with the rest of the world. And she is sitting on a drum-shaped stool, imported from South Asia, over the seas. The little puppy that she has is very likely imported from Europe. China was a very cosmopolitan culture, an age when a woman sat on the throne and ruled this vast empire. It was also a time of fashion. The hairdos that she had is one of the thirty-some hairdos of the time. At that time, people had a different concept of beauty. Particularly during that period of time, being skinny was considered poorly fed, it represents lack of money of the family, so having a full body was a representation of wealthy or royal at that period of time. She has a very round full face and she has a full figure. She’s in a private moment, probably was holding a mirror, trying to put on some more makeup. Her little puppy is playing with her slipper. You can tell that she’s very conscious of her beauty. It really shows the real life, you can feel there’s the life force moving around.

This classic pottery of the Tang Dynasty, “SHE”  is a significant cultural heritage as an evidence that shows us the inspiration, combinations with different cultures, the exchanges between the ancient Chinese culture and the other cultures. It’s this exchange, not just materials, but also the different ideas, the different concepts. It also tells us about human nature, about this constant and eternal pursuit of beauty. The luster may go away as time goes by, but this pursuit will never fade.

The Met experience is fantastic because of the works of arts and cultural difference of different country surprise me every step I take. If the were one word that can describe my tension during the day, it would be a “child.” Everything in the museum seems interesting, and I wanted to visit every exhibit. Every time I walk into a new area, I would drag the person with me and tell them to look at these. The Asian exhibit reminds me of the ancient drama I used to watch when I was little. The European paintings show a comparison between the period where people drew more religious portrait related to religion and the time where people were more sacred and drew pictures of themselves. The armors and weapons area made me extremely excited because I just finished playing a video game that uses these armors and weapons as references. In the Egyptian sections, I expect that there would be mummies in the coffins, but all the coffins were empty.

This experience will assist me during my first semester in Baruch by making me absorb the information I gain every time I walk towards a new art piece. The experience will help me because I studied in a highly-diverse campus. My high school was also a very diverse environment, but the variety of race is not as much because the high school provides a zone program. In College, it’s no longer consist of a neighborhood; it’s consist of the whole world. International students, Transfer students, and students from different states in the U.S. Therefore I believe using the knowledge I gained while touring around the museum could help me to start a conversation or even understand a topic related to the descriptions I saw on the objects.

On Monday of the October 9, I finally decided to visit the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Although that it was rainy, inside of the building it was much better. The free pass with CUNY ID, actually helped me to move through an admission much faster and not standing for at least twenty minutes of waiting in a long line. Rather than looking at more modern art which is honestly really absurd, I decided to start exploring the works from the 1880s and going to more recent ones. There are plenty of avant-garde exhibitions in this museum that I did not understand and even got confused off. However, some painting took my attention especially “The Starry Night” by Vincent van Gogh, “The Peak Project Hong Kong” by Zaha Hadid, and “Number 1” by Jackson Pollock. Well, most of them I mentioned really famous ones, attracted a majority of the visitors and tourists of different ages; furthermore, after seeing it by myself makes it more clear why it is. Doubtless, my favorite ones were sculpture exhibitions of my musical instruments and painting of Lullaby. I mean it is not an ordinary way of looking at the usual way you might imagine the music instruments, but looking at them from the perspective of rumors,   makes these sound sculptures, unique and special. Moreover, Lullaby an abstract way of looking at the music sheets and sounds produced through the score. To conclude, overall, I enjoyed spending the day looking at exhibitions in MoMA, that I heard and studied of back in high school. Although, I should add that I lacked understanding of modern arts, but would encourage everyone to visit this museum at least ones.