Art Building 1943-59

“This world is but a canvas to our imagination”; which always has been throughout the years. Art has been separated in different categories such as architectures, sculptures, photography and paintings. For my semester project, which was to visit an art or historic museum; my classmates and I went to the Reynolda House Museum of American art which provided us both the art and history. At first, we all assume that the visit would be boring or the art gallery would be dull. What shocked us the most was the actual experience being in the museum instead of just talking about it. We experienced multiple feelings during our visit in the art gallery as well as the historic area. From the art gallery which held many paintings of artist, to the house that R.J Reynolds and his family once occupied. Furthermore, it also showed us the legacy of R.J Reynolds and his family has left behind for the people of Winston-Salem.

Positioned alongside Central Park in the heart of New York City, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the largest and most influential art museums in the world. The Met houses an extensive collection of curated works that spans throughout various time periods and different cultures. The context of museum, especially one as influential as the Met, inherently predisposes its visitors to a certain set of understandings that subtly influence how they interpret and ultimately construct meanings about each individual object within the museum. Brent Plate in Religion, Art, and Visual Culture argues that “objects obtain different meanings in different locations and historical settings.”An object placed on display behind a glass case inside a museum would hold a vastly different meaning if it was put on sale by a street vendor, like the ones who set up their tables in close proximity to the Met. The different meanings that objects are able to obtain is attributed to the relationships that are established between the object itself and the environment that surrounds it. These relationships often involve the kind of audience that a museum attracts, where the work is exhibited, and how the exhibits within a museum is planned out. Museums subsequently have the ability to control how these relationships are established which influences the way a viewer is able to construct meaning. When a visitor observes an object on display at the Met, they instinctively construct a certain set of

Architecture in the 1950s was representative of the conformity caused by the Cold War. McCarthyism and the Red Scare were some of the major sources of this conformity. McCarthyism was the persecution of innocent people assumed to be communist and the forced conformity that the practice aroused in American public life. As the government grew more and more concerned with the development of communism in the United States, the country became extremely against communism and with the help of John McCarthy, the government set out on a mission to find all the communists hiding in the depths of America; many people were questioned and hundreds were either killed or exiled, even those that were wrongly convicted. With the threat of being removed from

The main building of the Art Institute is constructed mostly of masonry, with few windows, and feels very heavy and overpowering. Grand staircases and large columns dwarf visitors as they move through the galleries. This is similar to the way the art in the space makes you feel: small, unimportant, and sometimes even afraid. The Modern wing in constructed of steel and glass, and is very open and bright (except when intended not to be). The large north wall facing Millenium Park is one large expanse of windows, letting in plenty of indirect sunlight, and opening the gallery to the park. The space feels very light, in both senses of the word. As with the old building, the art feels similar to the space in that it is more open and less opressive.

The Dallas Museum is a renowned art museum established in 1903 and is located in Dallas, Texas (Neumann et al. 19). The Dallas Museum of art is one of the largest art museums in the United States of America containing more than 24,000 collections of art ranging from the ancient to the modern ones (MacDonald & Brettell 112). There are numerous things inside the museum, such as the pieces of art, museum visitors, and the architecture, that relate to the understanding of the world outside the museum in terms of the day to day life and the human society. My goal in this essay is to think outside the box and describe the observations I made inside the museum and explain how they relate to my everyday life, the wider world, or the human society.

With exhibitions of the most thought-provoking art, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago is one of the Nation’s largest facilities devoted to the art of our time (“About the MCA”) . The mission of the MCA is to offer a direct experience to the public of modern day art and living artists. German architect Joseph Paul Kleihues designed the new building with seven times the square feet of its previous facility (“The Building”) . October of 1967 the museum opened its doors to the public for the first time. The Museum of Contemporary Art is a symbol of modern art, culture, and the artist of our time. It is a stepping stone in history and will leave footprints in the heart of Chicago for many generations to come.

The purpose of this paper is to visit The Metropolitan Museum of Art and write a reaction paper about art works at the museum based on my impressions about them. To begin, I will start by giving you a little of background information about this interesting museum.

Different architects have different styles because they are trying to get at different things. Architecture is not just about making something beautiful anymore, it is about trying to get across a set of ideas about how we inhabit space. Two of the most famous architects of the twentieth century, one from each side, the early part and the later part up until today each designed a museum with money donated by the Guggenheim foundation. One of these is in New York City, it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The other is in bilbao, Spain, and it was designed by Frank Geary. My purpose of this paper is to interrogate each of these buildings, glorious for different reasons, to show how each architect was expressing their own style.

One pleasant afternoon, my classmates and I decided to visit the Houston Museum of Fine Arts to begin on our museum assignment in world literature class. According to Houston Museum of Fine Art’s staff, MFAH considers as one of the largest museums in the nation and it contains many variety forms of art with more than several thousand years of unique history. Also, I have never been in a museum in a very long time especially as big as MFAH, and my experience about the museum was unique and pleasant. Although I have observed many great types and forms of art in the museum, there were few that interested me the most.

Positioned alongside Central Park within the heart of New York City, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the largest and most influential art museums in the world. The Met houses an extensive collection of curated works that spans throughout various time periods and different cultures. The context of museums, especially one as influential as the Met, inherently predisposes its visitors to a set of understandings that subtly influence how they interpret and ultimately construct meanings about each individual object within a museum. By analyzing two separate works on exhibit at the Met, I will pose the argument that museums offer a unique expression of a world view that is dictated through every element of its construction.

The Guggenheim Museum is a form of abstract art which has no separate floor levels but uses a spiral ramp. This was his ideal of continuous space and most significant building. His principles

Before the mid-twentieth century, museums in Europe and the United States were generally planned in variations of the neoclassical style. But, the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao moved the heading of gallery outlines, which gave an extensive show venue to twentieth century and modern art, designed by the famous architect Frank Gehry. Architecture is important nowadays to the public, because it offers a physical surrounding environment in where we live in. Moreover, architecture is not only affected by the culture, but also by the economy of the country.

Mies van der Rohe is one of the most prominent figures in modernist architectural history, the man who popularised some of the most influential phrases of the era, e.g. “less is more”, and strove to push his ideas and philosophies, not just on what he thought a building should be, but of what he thought architecture itself was. He changed the cityscape of America, showing the world a style that was simple and elegant, with such a controlled palette of expressions that shone through in its geometric beauty.

Never before have I seen a museum as grand as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. From its architecture to its massive art collection, The Met has a little bit of everything and one is sure to find something that captures his or her interest. Considering that The Met is the United States' largest art museum, it is easy to get lost within its many corridors and wings. My visit to The Met took place during the last week of July. Despite the almost unbearable heat and humidity that hung in the air, visiting museums under these climate conditions is a welcome respite from a suffocating, yet bright summer afternoon.

Barr submitted the concept of what was to become of the museum. It had to be organized as a multi-departmental structure each devoted for Architecture and Design, Photography, Film and Video, and they should stand side by side with traditional arts such as Painting and Sculpture. Architect Philip Johnson built on this idea. The multi-departmental structure seemed to best fit with the burgeoning International Style, a modernist architectural movement from which Philip Johnson belonged. In this architecture, buildings are designed with simple geometric lines and clean, precise surfaces and with minimum decoration. Walls are made almost entirely of glass, known as curtain walls—a signature Johnson was known for—that are used to give the building a light and airy appearance.