Night at the museum

On Tuesday, October 21, 2025, us Macaulay students spent the night at the Brooklyn Museum. This was an amazing opportunity for us CSI students to see the friends with made with students from the other campuses but to also see such a large variety of artistry.

We began by heading to the Macaulay lounge so we can all bready to head off. While we waited for the bus, we were able to grab a slice of pizza and also played the game Chameleon to pass time. When everyone was ready, we all headed off to the bus and sat down for a loud (but relaxing) bus ride. On the bus, we played games and talked about so many things non-school related, so it was amazing to have the chance to have time outside of school and with each other.

I had no idea on how the Brooklyn Museum even looked like, so when we arrived I was amazed at our grand and elegant the architecture was. The architecture, in general, of the area surrounding the museum is beautiful, and it felt like as if I were in some big city in Europe. However, I was very confused when we walked inside to the museum, as the design was completely different from what I had seen outside.

I put my backpack in one of the bins, which I was so scared about as all my belongings were in this bag and feared someone would mistakenly take it. But nevertheless, we were instructed to move along and go to the elevators to the auditorium where all the Macaulay students sat together and listened to a very insightful but entertaining speech about how we should be hopeful of the future ahead of us and what we should expect and think about during our time at the museum. When this session was finished, we all headed off to the exhibit we were going to spend the night at. After we took the long way with a very crowded stairwell, we entered a green room that I, to be honestly, had no idea was about.

I tagged along a couple groups but also found myself looking at some artworks by myself. A lot of the artwork in this exhibit was beautiful and detailed. We were also able to see the descriptions of each artwork on screens and had the ease of being able to see each description around in the section without spending so much time at each one. These descriptions also had an image of the artwork next to it, so that was also great.

We then found one piece of artwork that became the topic of our reflection, which was the artwork of the most talked about person in our Arts of New York City lecture — Robert Mapplethorpe’s. We found one of his beautiful photographs of a flower, which was on a black plate which contrasted the white flower image. We thought about it for a while, and decided that this image was a display of how life can bloom in the dark, or a sad and melancholic time. We found that this was a possibility as Mapplethorpe’s life contained lots of darkness and tragedy, especially with his long winded journey of becoming a well-known artist and how he finally was able to bloom some time before his death.

We then walked around some more and found lots of interesting pieces of artwork, especially in a nude section and a room filled with random objects like bikes and chairs. However, I thought this was very repetitive, so it started getting a little bit confusing. Somehow after this, we all decided to stop walking around and just settle together in one section with benches.

Around 8:30, we began our way down to the lobby of the museum. We waited a while for the bus to return, but it’s okay because we spent our time well with lots of conversation. On the bus ride back to campus, it was a much different feel than on the way to the museum, most likely because everyone was tired and in fear of the exams that were happening the next day…

We retuned back to campus around 9:30, and the campus at the night time was pretty cool at night, especially since all the street lights were on and it was very empty. I ended my day by going home and studying for the math lab exam we had the next day, and by 12 AM, my mind decided to shut down and fall asleep.

The Night at the Museum was such a great opportunity, especially as all the Macaulay kids were able to interact with each other in person and we were able to see our friends again after being separated by long distances between campuses.