On Saturday I visited a museum, the Rubin Museum of Art. This was the first time I went to a museum in the past 3-4 years, and I went with a group of friends. It all started with the commute to the museum. The commute was not the best, and it did take time to get there, especially because someone came late to the ferry and made us miss the first one (Brendan). When we finally got to Manhattan after an hour, we took a train to Rubin, and during that train ride we saw some strange things that confirmed that we were in New York. Besides that, I enjoyed socializing with friends during the commute. When we got to Rubin we paid for our tickets and went up a lot of stairs getting tired before we even started our viewing of the museum. After we finished looking at the museum, we all found something that stuck out to us. For me, there were 3 pieces in particular. Those 3 being: The Vast Bhutan, Muted Expressions, and The Gongs.

The Vast Bhutan:

This piece stuck out to me for three main reasons. Those being that it was very big, colorful, and that it was made out of Bhutanese prayer flags. These Bhutanese prayer flags were found on the floor or in other places and were taken and made into this art piece. This art piece spans the whole museum, going from the top floor to the main floor. This piece has 5 mad horses in it, each a different color. The five colors being: yellow, green, white, blue, and red. Each color symbolized a different thing. Yellow symbolizes wisdom and earth, green symbolizes equanimity and water, white symbolizes purity and air, blue symbolizes endurance and space, and lastly, red symbolizes compassion and fire. The horses are called mad horses because they symbolize the negative effects the flags have on the environment, even though they are meant for protection. These horses are the Lungta, and they carry the prayers from earth to the heavenly realm.

The Gongs:

This piece stood out to me because of the physical aspect and that the person themselves gets to interact with the art piece. The point of this peace is so that you channel all your anger into the gong and then you hit it lightly. This hit puts all your anger into the gong, which you lower into some water. This makes the water absorb your anger, and it starts to shake. Later the water becomes still again, and this is supposed to symbolize that your anger has dissipated. There were multiple different gongs, each a different size, and each made different noises. I interacted with this art piece but felt nothing. That is because during the time of me hitting the gong, I had no anger to channel into it, thus making me feel nothing.

Muted Expressions:

This piece stood out to me for a single reason. That reason is because of the meaning behind this artwork. This is called Muted Expressions, and it was made by Tsherin Sherpa. This piece was made after the 2015 earthquake in Nepal that killed over 9,000 people and injured over 20,000. One part of this piece that stood out to me was that there were two hands in that artwork that were barely touching each other. This is supposed to symbolize a man and a woman’s last touch before they got separated due to the earthquake (I got told this by a worker in the Rubin Museum). This just added to the meaning of this art piece to me. This is why the artwork left a standing impression on me.

 

These are the three pieces of art that stuck out to me in the Rubin Museum.