Earlier this week, I ventured with the rest of my class to the Brooklyn Museum. As a preliminary to my actual discussion regarding it, I’ll say upfront that I found it to be underwhelming and short of the expectations I had for it as advertised. There were some really interesting or appealing exhibits, but, for the most part, they were monotone and didn’t pique my interest in any meaningful way.
I say this in full seriousness: the journey to the museum, which I had previously mimicked when driving into Downtown Brooklyn. I spent around 75% of my commute glancing at the window at brownstones, bodegas, or new luxury condos that seemed effectively abandoned (the other 25% was talking about the mayoral elections with 3 other people). I will say, it was pretty interesting that we hopped off the highway near Sunset Park, as, typically, my family and I would go all the way to the Brooklyn Bridge and then make an attempt to leave on an offramp. Anyways, our commute wrapped up after passing several blocks worth of late Victorian/Gilded Age buildings, and we ended up having to walk an extra block’s worth of ground just to get into a cramped auditorium.
The exhibits themselves, like I said previously, were nothing to gander at twice (for the most part). I noticed that a majority of the exhibits presented to us either had humans directly in them (whether in a self-portrait or other form), or involved deeply human elements. I know that sounds generic, but that is genuinely one of the deepest observation I had about the gallery itself. I, for some reason, thought that the Brooklyn Museum was specifically about Brooklyn and its history going into it, and while there were some elements (such as a painting of the Brooklyn Bridge and the lobby having a Dodgers banner and a BMT subway map) of Brooklyn’s identity, it ended up being a run-of-the-mill gallery. I was extremely disappointed to find out that there happened to only be one floor that we could actually visit. For a borough that would be the third biggest city in the country if not for the consolidation? Extremely disappointing, maybe even embarassing. Out of the pieces that were there, nothing was world-famous or even particularly appealing, besides the occasional chair. I really don’t understand why there were so many chairs. Overall, I can’t say much as very little actually stood out to me, but there was one piece I was interested in highlighting.
“A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie” was one of the few pieces in the Brooklyn Museum that I could say, with confidence, that I enjoyed looking at more than once. The very obvious beauty of the scenery depicted, while breathtaking, was only part of the story, as, after my visit, I ended up looking the painting up in the Museum’s collection, and learned more about the “concealed legacy of colonialism and violence” (as written by the museum itself); I had assumed the painting was a direct reflection of 19th century American expansionism due to the subtle yet ominous cloud in the background, but didn’t fully confirm such a suspicion until I looked it up and found it. It reminded me deeply of “American Progress” by John Gast, not only because of that ominous cloud/clear sky divide as shown in both Gast’s work and in “A Storm in the Rocky Mountains”, but because of the sheer beauty and breadth of the mountains/wilderness depicted, even if such beauty/breadth is much more noticeable in the latter versus the former. While it had no visible signs of people, the battle between dark and light stood out in it, and I constantly went back to the piece both during my visit and after to fully take in everything it had. Overall, while my museum visit was deeply underwhelming, shorter, and less interesting than I had hoped, I found that particular piece to be captivating and truly outstanding.
Leave a Reply