For this event, I had gone to Godwin-Ternbach Museum and had visited the Tour on the exhibition “Quinceañera: Dress and Memory in Latine Culture.” I honestly felt both somewhat embarrassed at the fact that for our initial time going there we had backpacks held out in front of us while other people were wearing suits, which led me to feel as though I wasn’t truly taking in what was meant here. I didn’t understand any of the significance for any of the dresses items on display other than the “Oh that dress is pretty!”. That’s why I felt it was important I go back a second time to actually understand and appreciate what is being laid out in front of me.
The tour was interesting and enlightening, proving it to be much more beneficial to my experience to have an actual tour guide with me to provide me with the useful information about why each item on display held so much value to a Quinceanera and Latin American Culture by proxy of that. Our small group walked around both the bottom and top floors, and along the way our tour guide had detailed information about every single object on display and was ready to answer any questions that we had. Another fun interesting part was when our tour guide added their own little fun facts from their own life about Quinceanera’s into the event which made it more personal really.
It really does reinforce the ideas that we learn in class with how diverse Queens is and how diverse it’s arts is within that. A Museum as we have discussed is a place to showcase art in of itself, and there is no denying the fact that a Quinceanera is both a coming of age event but can also with the amount of dedicated work and culture behind it can be seen as an art. This understanding of the word art serves to be an greater realization and application of the word as we learn in class. There is many different art forms that isn’t just drawings or painting, and many of these arts have cultural significance and impact than we can see at just a glance. That is a function of this class to analyze just that, what art does culturally and how many forms of art there are and how we can analyze them all to see what cultural roots they both have and contribute too, and to understand just how versatile the word “Art” is and what it can really mean.
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