Visit to Albany Institute of History and Art

Located in the middle of the city of Albany, this museum was surprisingly large with two floors of exhibits. My classmate Michael Anderson and I explored the entire museum, but focused mainly on the the second floor exhibition on graphic design because it was contemporary art. Graphic design is the carefully planned arrangement of visual images and printed text that can convey both meaning and message. This exhibition broke down visual arts into for distinct categories for display: typography, commerce and graphic design, political and social messages, and the creative process.

The exhibition was immense and covering the entire second floor, but I found two topics particularly interesting. One sideroom focused on how technological advances such as the Internet has changed graphic design throughout the years. This area also showed the evolution of entertainment sources such as video games. It was incredible to see an early video game system next to the incredibly complex video game systems available now. Another area I found very interesting was the displays of graphic design used in times of war. These examples were were used to express political messages such as pride in the nation.

Favorite Genre of the Semester

For my favorite topic that Professor Blum presented to us was Street Art.  I have selected a few pictures that I have found on line to present to all of you.  These pieces of work are very fun to look at.  I hope you all enjoy them!!!!!

The Frances Young Tang Museum

For my museum visit I went to the Frances Young Tang Museum on the Skidmore College campus.  This museum was very interesting because it was my first time going to an actual gallery.  There was only one exhibit but everyone that went with me was so interested that we stayed for a while.  There were very interesting items and I wish I could have posted one but they were very strict about pictures being taken and nearly kicked us out because we were taking one.

The items in the gallery were beautiful pieces.  One that really caught my eye was this item as soon as you walked in that was made of plastic bottles.  This is the first thing that everyone sees when they walk into the gallery and I believe it took the person who was the artist a long time to construct.  There was also a couple pieces of one man in different poses.  There were 4 pictures of him in different poses holding different items.  If there were one thing I can post on this blog it would be this but I could not take a picture.  This is the one thing that stood out for me in this visit.  I really wanted to share this with everyone.