Going into the night at the museum I was physically exhausted from playing basketball for 3 hours. On the bus ride I took a short nap, however it was cut short, so I was not in the mood at all to visit a museum honestly. So, my opinion on the museum will probably be heavily influenced by how I felt going into it. The museum had a great entrance, and I think it certainly left an impression. Looking at the architecture I can already tell it had a lot of history behind it, and I was amazed by the design. However, that view was short lived as we entered, got welcome, and entered into the auditorium to hear the prepared presentation.

I don’t really remember much of the presentation because I was so tired and the man sitting next to me was a tank so I was distracted, but I did find the philosophical questions and the idea of “seeing” interesting. Oftentimes we hear a term so much we forget to think about what it means. A question like “what is a museum” made me think about what we were really visiting in the first place. I also remember the notion of “seeing” and really viewing the art piece before doing any research. It is easy to just quickly search up what an art piece means and move on, but frequently art is ambiguous so just trying to find one “correct solution” is incorrect when it comes to art.

I Know’d it Was Ripe by Thomas Hovenden

This was the piece of artwork that caught most of my attention at the museum. For whatever reason I thought this painting was done recently. The realism caught my attention; it was almost like a photograph taken just yesterday of someone enjoying a watermelon. But, what changed the entire meaning of the painting for me was just the time period alone. This work by Thomas Hovenden was done in 1885, and if you know that time period you know the horrible atrocities being committed to African-Americans then. The boy’s happiness in the picture was a shock considering the history of the time. 1885 was post reconstruction America which is often called the Gilded age. In this period the Southern slave states returned to local control and we saw the rise of segregation policies in the form of Jim Crow laws. So, I thought his happiness may be a facade forced upon by the artist to capture an enthusiastic picture of the young black boy. However, I researched the painting and apparently the artist is actually in fact a black sympathizer since he was married to Helen Corson, who was a Quaker abolitionist. I am glad that his smile isn’t forced, but this painting may have had an unintended effect of showcasing that African-Americans were alright after the reconstruction era and simplified their suffering. Although I am sure the artist had no intention of doing so it may have had that effect during that time meaning that now when I look at the “happy painting” I almost feel sad because of the effects and time period it may have been taken in.

Overall although I was very tired, I enjoyed my trip to the museum and it was a lot of fun. I will say the art from this museum seemed more relevant to the time than the other museum visits we did so I was able to connect with the art more here. The artwork here, although sometimes simple in appearance, I think had a lot of meaning behind them and it was very enjoyable to try to find their meanings.

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