Art Museum Trips

By Julie Potter on July 18, 2024

This past week I was lucky to have visited the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in NYC as well as the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA). The New York museum trip was a part of me celebrating my birthday, and coincidentally I had scheduled a trip to the Philly Art Museum for two days later! This is probably the most art I've ever seen in a week before and I had such a great time, and to no one's surprise, took a lot of photos during the two trips.

MAD

Up first was the Museum of Arts and Design. I had never made it in for a visit during other NYC trips I've taken in the past and was very happy to have seen the amazing exhibitions on display. There were four exhibitions on view when I attended including "Out of the Jewelry Box" (multiple artists), Anne Wilson "The Mad Drawing Room and Errant Behaviors", "Craft Front and Center: Conversation Pieces" (multiple artists), and Sonya Clark's "We Are Each Other". If you're in the NYC area or will be soon I highly recommend you take some time to go see this display, and if not check out their website for more details on the artists!

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY IN NYC

I also took some street photography photos in between and after attending the galleries and loved briefly getting to return to one of my favorite genres of photographing. Most of these were taken in or around Times Square anywhere from 3pm to 6pm.

MoMA

I also finally got to visit the New York Museum of Modern Art (or MoMA for short) which I have wanted to see for years! We started off on the 5th floor and worked our way down through the other three accessible floors, starting by seeing Van Gogh's Starry Night! Seeing one of the most famous paintings in western art in person was an incredible experience and I'm looking forward to going back! You really can't appreciate the texture and layering of paint in artists like Van Gogh's work until you see the physical pieces and move around to view it at different angles.

MoMA also had the best collection of photographs I have seen in an art museum, as for some weird coincidence, every time I visit a major museum, their photo display is closed (more on this later). I particularly enjoyed the various found photography displays, as well as several multiple exposure film photos. The bottom snapshot I took of two photos from MoMA were long exposures of a ballerina dancing. These two were taken by Gjon Mili in the 40's and are silver gelatin prints. Later research confirmed what I had speculated when viewing the photos in the museum, which is that these were long exposure photographs taken with multiple quick flashes of light, producing multiple of the dancer as she moved in the frame. One of the best parts of learning about photography and seeing other's work is that once you understand the basic functions of a camera you can deconstruct how an artist created their image.

PMA

Last but not least, was the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I had visited this museum a few times in the past as it is only a short trip from home, as well as one of the museums that Marywood's art department organizes an annual trip to in the spring. The museum features a variety of art mediums as well as installations that span entire rooms, including the Teahouse, and The Drawing Room from Landsdowne House. My favorite highlights were definitely Monet's Japanese Footbridge painting, which was one of my childhood favorites, as well as Severin Roesen's "Still Life with Birds Nest #3". I took the least amount of photos while visiting the Philly Art Museum since I have been so many times and wanted to just enjoy my time there, but I do love the few that I did take.