INTRODUCTION: 

       After finishing all my Tuesday classes on October 15th, I was filled with excitement in having the rare opportunity to meet up with all four hundred of the Macaulay students. And so, I took the long fifty-minute drive to Prospect Park in preparation for this event. When I arrived, security greeted me and as usual checked my bag. I was able to easily locate all my Macaulay CSI friends, as they were all walking toward the auditorium on the third floor. Following multiple speeches made by the directors and deans of Macaulay, everyone parted ways throughout the museum, and off I went to my next art museum journey.

 

SECTION 1 (EARLY DYNASTY PERIOD CIVILIZATIONS):

“Cosmetic Palette” and “Cosmetic Dish in the Form of a Fish” Artifact

“Third Display” Artifacts

       For more than thousands of years, the Brooklyn Museum has given me the invaluable opportunity to learn that art had always existed in early human civilization. As represented in the “Cosmetic Palette” artifact, both men and women had commonly used palettes like those in creating color paints when grinding certain materials. With sharp materials that were disposed of by these ancient humans, I’ve learned that they also find enjoyment in creatively carving stones to certain recognizable shapes around them, such as fish as shown in “Cosmetic Dish in the Form of a Fish.” The second display with the beaded necklaces fascinated me the most within this particular section of the museum because of its patterns being used in cultures that exist in the modern day. In many documentaries shown in school, I recall seeing indigenous groups and even modern-day tribesmen in Africa crafting beans out of wood and using stones to form lines of patterns on string, which created this sense of historical recognition when I first saw the third exhibit. 

 

SECTION 2 (ANCIENT EGYPT):

“The New Kingdom Pair Statue” Artifact

“Relief of Amun, Ahmose-Negertari, and King Amunhotep I” Artifact

       Ancient Egyptian cultures have fascinated me the most, as it has been widely documented and universalized in news articles and even pictures of the Great Pyramids of Giza. Upon looking at some artifacts, I’ve seen that many of them were made out of clay and were used highly to symbolize their rulers and certain animals that were common in Egypt. For example, I’ve learned that many Egyptian sculptures express bonds through sculpting two individuals like the “The New Kingdom Pair Statue”, which represents the connection of a scribe to a singer who appeared to look like one of the Egyptian goddesses. For some of these Egyptian artifacts, like in “Relief of Amun, Ahmose-Negertari, and King Amunhotep I”, I originally thought that the symbols around it were made for decorative purposes. After a quick Google search, I made on my phone, however, I learned later that the symbols were actually early Egyptian hieroglyphs that were used as their primary writing language. This made the art much more interesting to me, as many of the artifacts had embedded words that the artists wanted to openly express to their audience. Another interesting thing I’ve found that I forgot to take a photo of was the authentic mummies that were on display. It felt eerie when I looked inside an opened coffin with its interior contents on display. It raised a lot of questions to me of the sort of tasks archaeologists had to go through when uncovering a coffin in a crowded and unsanitary pyramid.

 

SECTION 3 (WESTWARD EXPANSION)/CONCLUSION:

“Man’s Shirt Cut” Artifact

“Painting #2” Artifact

       The brand new fifth floor was an experience I was grateful for, being one of the very first few people to enter it before it was opened to the general public. Upon entry, I noticed that many of the works of art were dedicated to showing indigenous culture. The “Man’s Shirt Cut”, for example, gave me a look at the typical style of clothing many Native Americans were wearing before the early European colonization. Many of the pictures, like “Painting #2”, gave me a saddened emotion when seeing the early American settings during that time, especially the advanced machinery that farmers were using to display Native American land. These works of art have connected well to the feeling I’ll always get when entering my high school U.S. history class, having seen many of them on my teacher’s walls as well. After exploring the fifth floor, I was quick to examine other floors and see other cultures’ historical artifacts, but found out that I had run out of time. Despite this, I left the museum with a smile having seen artifacts and paintings that altogether told a story of how early civilizations had developed into the modern society that I live in today.