Art Museums

For assignment 1, you have visited a museum – either in person or virtually. You had the opportunity to choose from a few options, but there is one commonality among all of the museums that you had to choose from: they contained a valuable collection of art that you were able to see. Museums have been around for centuries and are used to contain and display the objects that a collector thinks are important and valuable. It gives the public an opportunity to see the relics from ancient civilizations or contemporary artists. Museums are considered assets in a community, and are centers for culture and learning.
Sometimes, though, the objects that are displayed have been stolen, or mis-appropriated or out of context. They are often seen as places of privilege – the collections were created by extremely wealthy individuals or communities. Additionally, many museums disproportionally highlight works by western, Christian, white and male makers. Marginalized communities are often even more marginalized in museums. Contemporary museums are trying hard to fix some of the wrongs that have been made throughout museum history, but like in the rest of our society, they have a long way to go.
For this discussion, I’d like for you to address the following questions in your thread:
Name a positive effect that museums have had on Art. How did this affect your interpretation of the works you viewed when you did your museum visit?
Name a negative outcome of museums on Art. Was there anything that you saw that you thought wasn’t quite right on your visit?
What is something that you think could change to make museum spaces more accessible to more people?
What is your favorite way to view art in your daily life?
Please write a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 300 words in your post. Your original thread should appear on the discussion by Thursday of this week. Then take until the end of the day on Monday (6/28) to respond to a minimum of 3 classmates’ threads. As you are responding to your classmates threads, please choose one of their points, and compare or contrast it to your own post – how are you thinking similarly? How are you thinking differently? Your responses should be at least 75 words long.

Reply to amy
To me I believe that museums have played a huge role in the representation and development of art at large. One of the effect towards art that I can think of is that they keep art alive. What I mean by this, when people who are so interested in art visit museums and get a momentous experience, they to develop interest into doing art work and becoming artists themselves, and this is improving art works. Better development of art results in production of quality work and that is more appealing and easy to interpret. During my visit I was thrilled to see some artworks that represented my culture and the extraordinary work motivated me to look more into art and hence development ability to best interpret the nice sculptures.
During my visit the only downfall of museums that I saw was loose rules of protecting the artworks. With the big crowds in the museum people tend to touch the pieces of art and some stand in front of them taking pictures and these kind of actions can be demoralizing to the pro art individuals. So I have reasons to believe that this can be destructive to art sculptures and also to the art world as a whole if more people get a demoralized and change their mind from supporting and improving art.
I think museums should not people to come in large groups and be taking pictures of each other in front of the nice works. Also there should be a time limit on the viewing platform so that there is no over crowding to allow free flow of people while viewing. Normally i did not visit museums much but I believe it’s something that I want to do more often after starting this class.

reply to mark
1. a positive effect museums have had on art is, the culture. There where African and Egypt exhibits, along with other nationalities/locations. This helps people have appreciation for all cultures. This effected my interpretation because museums where started by white, Christian, money owning males. At the beginning of museums they probably had lots of western white peoples art and not a lot of representation. So it shows that people are trying to make an effort to include more pieces from other cultures.
2. A negative, museums have had on art is how they are set up. It makes it very easy to walk by art and not truly take in the art. it is more of art work on walls and a lot of walking, instead of truly sitting down and observing a piece.
3. Something that could change to make museum spaces more accessible to more people, is having more slops for people in wheel chairs near all the stairs. Some museums also lack elevators for the elderly or people who have difficulty walking. They could also utilize outside space more and displays more work outside
4. I view art in my daily life through paintings, books, and Technology

reply Isabelle
In my opinion, museums have become so unrated because of Technology. Almost everything accessible into someone’s cellphone, but that doesn’t make museums any less dominant. An advantage of having museums can go to one place and let the art speak to you. It’s a place where you can alone or a group. The art and background information given to visitors is critical information of a person’s culture. It’s an excellent source for classes and learning and seeing new things. I don’t think it was anything specifically with these advantages of why I chose my art, but I can say the culture and learning something new was my broad focus of picking my two favorite pieces. I then was able to see what spoke to me. It’s not very many negative advantages of a museum, but the few that come to mind would be cost and design. Some Art exhibits are costly, and being for that causes for art that is only diverse to specific groups of people and not meant for everyone. Or you have the free museums, but the look on the outside is outdated, looks dull, or too prestigious that people won’t visit. I think as well some museums don’t give the new artist a chance either. A piece is a worth so much money that they instead keep it. Luckily I didn’t experience any of that. I felt the place I saw did a great job of trying to have different pieces of art that draw people to it. My only suggestion is that we make museums back to what it was about the art. Update some buildings, get newer art, or rotate art out so that other artists have a chance to speak to the world as well. I always enjoy new contemporary art by seeing it and, of course, hearing it (poetry).

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