Each year, it’s a special treat to go to the Brooklyn Museum with the Macaulay Seminar 1 students in early fall – and this year was no different. It was – as expected – a joy!
On October 21, 2025, the entire class of Macaulay freshman, TLC Staff and Fellows, Faculty, and Academic Affairs flowed into the Brooklyn Museum and had a Night at the Museum. The annual event is a night for Seminar 1: Arts in NYC students to experience the iconic Brooklyn Museum all to themselves with their classmates. We ask them to engage with the artwork, discuss their reactions/responses to the art together, and the connect it to their experiences with art in the city more broadly.
Students started their evening in the Auditorium with several speeches to inspire and invite them to question, and then went out into the galleries to complete their activities for the night. They were asked about their reflections on the art pieces, museums, community, and experience.
Students did a wonderful job of engaging the Seminar 1 objectives, collaborating with their colleagues in groups, and submitting responses for their Gallery & Reflections. See the collections below and look for the forthcoming report.
Faculty and staff attending this event work as guides, mentors, and people to support. However, in large part, we’re also there to experience the art/museum as a part of the Macaulay community ourselves. As a TLC Fellow who’s attended this event over the course of several years, I found myself entering the gallery this year with questions of my own:
- (After all these years) What is art?
- Does the way we look at art change depending on who we’re with? (My anecdotal answer to this is: yes.)
- How do we look at the same art with new eyes each year? (á la Marcel Proust: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new sights, but in looking with new eyes.”)(And see the question above, I think when we see with our collective eyes/the eyes of another person physically present next to us – they’re “new” eyes as compared to our selves alone.)
- Do students experience this museum as typical of museums in NYC?
- How is this experience a reflection of being a part of the city?
While I started answering a few of the above questions for myself in parentheses and italics above, I think there probably aren’t set answers. My main takeaways are that the experience is thought provoking year after year and that art/museum space always evokes new questions. As to the last question above, it also brings me to one of the greatest joys across Macaulay Common Events – which is seeing the Macaulay community being made in real time.
Equally as exciting as the academic and artistic connections that students make are the connections they make with each other. I’ve enjoyed witnessing students engage NATM as the social moment that is it. In a world where isolation can be overwhelming, and where Macaulay students are spread across 9 physical campuses and 5 boroughs, the connection in person is invaluable. We see students arrive solo; we see them arrive with friends; and, we witness as they make friends and plans while they’re at the museum.
Getting to see the culmination of Seminar 1: Arts in NYC as it continues to transform after NATM through to the STEAMFest in December was also a lovely treat. The Seminar 1 students brought an array of projects interrogating and exemplifying art/the arts to our December STEAMFest event. (More on this to come! Feel free to preview the work from STEAMFest here.)
