Minara Akter
Professor: John Frank
SSN 187.8767
17 February 2009
THE DELIGHTFUL WORK OF ART
The BronxMuseum, which was found in 1971, which is known as of the primary fine art museum in the Bronx. It spotlights on multi-ethnic community exhibits and its themes of special interest. The fieldstone house has the distinction of being the second oldest in the borough. There are exhibits depicting life in 18th century Bronx, as well as a display on how the area evolved. There are also guided tours offered by the Historical Society. The museums permanent collections of 600 works are done by artists of African, Asian and Latin-American Ancestry.The museum also offers professional development and its educational programs provide instruction in art and media studies for teens and adults. Also it interpretive art tours for school and community groups, and regular public programs that enhances understanding of contemporary art.Through art, the manifestation of a community’s spirit can be revealed. Each artist utilized techniques such as perception, symbolism, and shading to embody the spirit of a society’s religion. Many similarities and differences are readily seen through the use of these techniques in both art and literature.
Exhibitions of the permanent collection and changing exhibitions focus on a wide range of topics including historical and contemporary issues of cultural relevance to the Bronx. There is one particular exhibit that I would like to mention is “Woman’s Liberation, March, New York, 1971”. It is described as Winogrand, a Bronx native, surveyed the American landscape of daily life, producing photographs that has become iconic capsules of their historical place and time. Using a 35mm camera and a wide-angle lens, he was able to capture an expanded view from a near distance, often tilting his camera on an inclined horizon to fit an entire figure in the frame. Winogrand’s wandering explorations of New York in 1960’s yielded a portrait of the city’s street’s as a locus of energy, a site of informal encounters and unexpected confrontations. His urban images range in subject from the most densely buzzing crowds and alluring attractions to the loneliest denizens and bleakest sidewalks. The surging protest marches that frequently took over the streets during that tumultuous era feature prominently in Winogrand’s body of work, underscoring the social tension present in many of his less overtly volatile images.
Additionally, the institution of the Bronx Museum of Arts provides art exhibits to residents of the Bronx and to other boroughs. Many of these exhibits promote issues important to Africans. One such exhibit that I found interesting was by Fatimah Tuggar, was born in Kaduna, Nigeria, 1967, lives and works in New York City. Her descriptions of her exhibits were like - since the mid 1990s, she has been photographing andappropriating mass-media images of scenes from daily life in Africa, and the United States to create digital photomontages; the resulting incongruous images often point to absurd economic disparities and harsh political realities. In a series of recent collage works, Tuggar has been pasting advertising billboards promoting movies, services, or AIDS awareness and street signs from New York into urban scenes shot in Lagos and other African cities in order to highlight social, political, and economic interconnections and injunctions.
The bulk of the collection of the BronxMuseum consists of artist and collection files. The collection files contain correspondence, deeds of gifts, newspaper clippings, press releases, and other various documents regarding specific pieces of art that have been acquired by the museum. Artist files include expedition announcements, press releases, and newspaper clippings regarding individuals whose work has been purchased by the Museum or interested in acquiring. The artist files also contain documents regarding artists who have participated in the Artists in the Marketplace program. Collection and artist files are organized by the last name of the artist. Of particular note are the artist and collection files of Glenn Ligon and Whitfield Lovell, both of whom are African Americans from the Bronx. There are also artist files regarding Carlos Ortiz and Mel Rothsenthal. These artists documented the decline of the Bronx during the 1970s through the 1980s. The Museum also publishes exhibition catalogs for most of their exhibits. Other publications include numerous brochures and a newsletters.
Museum exhibition shows Bronx Jews in Halcy on decades between wars. They came to the Bronx by subway, to the highlands of the city from the Lower East Side, and within a half-century many of them left, most by automobile, for the greener pastures of suburbia. The story of what went on during that lively interim is the theme of ''Between the Wars: The Bronx Express, a Portrait of the Jewish Bronx.'' The exhibition, on view at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1040 Grand Concourse, at 165th Street, captures the image of what it says was in 1948 ''the most intensely J.
In the variousness of its exhibitions, the BronxMuseum of the Arts is an example to all museums that serve neighborhood interests as well as the cause of high art and effectively used perception, symbolism and shading to speak to their audience. These talented artists, like talented writers, set the canvas on which to paint the spirit of the people. It is through their vision that one can see the dreams of a society. In addition to mounting major exhibitions, the museum is committed to collaborating with local community groups for exhibitions on-site and at various nontraditional settings throughout the Bronx. Disability Access such as fully accessible restrooms and telephones available, gift shops:, posters, T-shirts, exhibition-related materials, gift items are on sale, on-site parking, On public streets and at garage on 165th St, across from museum.