Assignments

• Blog Post #6, due by 11:59pm on Tuesday:
  If you have seen live music within the last two years, choose (a) or (b). If you have not, you must choose (a).
  a) Visit a live music performance somewhere in NYC this week. It can be any genre, and live DJs count as well as bands. Write about the community that you see listening to the music. What visual signals, if any, are there of the audience’s connection to the music – dancing, outfits, makeup? Does the music seem to be attached to any particular subculture? What is your impression of the music? Does being here help you feel connected to any community?b) Visit the American Folk Art Museum (2 Lincoln Square, NY, NY, 10023). Admission is free, and they’re closed on Mondays. Take photographs. Identify two pieces that struck you as punk. Why did they stand out to you in this way? Do you think that the artist(s) intended these pieces to come across this way?
• Complete your final project, to be submitted to me before or in class, and your final presentation, to be presented in class. (10 minutes plus brief Q&A.) Remember – your final project is worth 20% of your overall grade, and your final presentation is worth 10%. Do not put this off until last minute, and do not use AI – if you’re caught, you’ll receive a 0.
• Click here to read the assignment for the final project and final presentation along with the grading rubrics for these assignments.

1. Post Blog Post #5 by 11:59pm on Sunday, 26 July:
   Consider the art that you saw at the High Line. Select one piece. Could it be replicated, in the way that paintings can be? (Think back to our discussion of Ways of Seeing/John Berger.) Why or why not? How is the experience of seeing this piece in person, on-site, different from how seeing a replication of it would be?
2. Prepare a question to ask Julian, of the emo band Common Sage, who will be our guest next week. (One of his band’s songs is on our playlist.)
3. Watch the documentary “Punk: Attitude” on the Texts page of our website. You’ll notice that some of the people speaking have very different opinions about things (e.g. some punks praise hippies, while others hate them). Consider these kinds of contradictions as you watch the documentary.
4. Listen to the playlist “Punk, etc.” It has 20 songs and is about one hour and five minutes long.

1. Post Blog Post #4 by 11:59pm on Tuesday, 21 July:
   Reflect on our conversation with the cofounders of Queer Van Kult. Did you ask any questions? How did they respond? Was their answer surprising? How did this change or reinforce your understanding of the topic you asked about? If you didn’t ask a question of your own, did their discussion as a whole either change or reinforce your interpretation of their work or your understanding of the arts?
2. Before next week’s class, read/watch three texts, all on the Texts page. They are:
   1. Excerpts from Art Hiding in NYC
   2. “Serving Broader Audiences, Museums Engage Communities with Public Spaces.”
   3. Watch “Public Art Trip: New York City.”
3. Don’t forget — next week, on 22 July, we will not be meeting in our usual classroom. Instead, meet at the 23rd street entrance to the High Line, above street level, at 1:00pm. Prof. Salois will be leading you through the High Line.

1. Visit the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Take pictures of any art that catches your eye. Then, go to the gift shop and try to find any reproductions or reappropriations of any of the pieces you photographed and take a picture of that, too.
2. After your museum visit, submit Blog Post 3 by 11:59pm on Sunday, 12 July.
   Choose one piece from the museum that you visited. Provide a picture of the piece itself and another picture of the piece adapted or reappropriated. (If they didn’t have that piece reproduced in the giftshop, you can discuss the piece reappropriated as an image on your phone.)
   Reflecting on our in-class discussion, address the following questions:
   * Does the impact of this piece change by being adapted in this way?
   * How?
   * How did the meaning of the piece change for you seeing it in person vs. seeing it reproduced and adapted in this new way?
3. Read “This is Pride: Queer Van Kult produces avant-garde performance and art highlighting talented LGBTQ+ locals” before class. It is available on the Texts page.
4. Optional: Read “Inside the Surreal Funhouse,” an interview with Queer Van Kult, also available on the Texts page.
5. Prepare a question to ask Zoë and Nicie, our guests, who are two of the co-founders of Queer Van Kult.

1. Read “Julio Anta on the Importance of Bilingual Representation in Children’s Literature,” watch “How to Read Comics the Marvel Way,” and listen to the podcast “Latinx Borders: Graphic Novels with Julio Anta and Jacoby Salcedo.”
2. After having read/watched/listened to these texts, prepare a question to ask Julio Anta next week.
3. Post Blog Post #2 by 11:59pm on Sunday, July 5th, responding to the following prompt:
   Share a photograph that you or your group took during our workshop at the Alice Austen House and discuss how it relates to the photos that Alice Austen took. What are these photos’ connections to (Alice’s, yours, or other people’s) community? If the photo you took doesn’t seem to capture community to you, consider what it means to you, as a visitor to a historic house museum, vs. what the photos taken by Alice in the same locations might have meant to her, being taken in her home/yard.

1. Visit the Met (the Metropolitan Museum of Art), free for Macaulay students with ID (and ‘name your price’ for anyone else with an NY ID or a student ID from NY, NJ, or CT). Spend a couple of hours there. Explore. Take photos of all of the pieces that impact you. Be sure to also photograph the informational cards showing you the work’s title, artist, and other info.
2. After your museum visit, submit Blog Post 1 by 11:59pm on Sunday, 28 June:
   Pick two pieces that you found particularly impactful, which you hadn’t seen before this visit. How did they relate to your preexisting ideas about art? Did they support these ideas or challenge them? How do they relate to New York City? Include photos.
3. Read “Alice Austen’s Larky Life,” on our Texts page, ahead of next week’s class.

Remember: Next week, on 1 July, we’re meeting at the Alice Austen House on Staten Island, not in our regular classroom.