Museum Response: Tang Teaching Museum

For the museum requirement, I attended the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College in Saratoga. The exhibit I went to see was Nicole Eisenman’s, The Way We Weren’t. Before I even saw the exhibit, I was really intrigued by the name of the exhibit. When you initially hear it, it seems like a normal title for an exhibit, but I thought that it really makes you think. The Way We Weren’t really gets you thinking about what you as a person, are not. I found that very interesting before I even stepped foot into the exhibit. The exhibit itself was very neat. It encompassed many different paintings. Some of the paintings showed one person and some depicted large groups of people gathered together in one place. I thought it was interesting how in the same show, Eisenman went from one extreme to the other. I felt that her exhibit was much different from the other exhibits on display at the Tang Teaching Museum. Her exhibit was all paintings, but each painting was clearly different and most of them appeared to have a completely different theme. The other exhibits on display, such as Arlene Shechet’s Blow By Blow, all included works of art that were all very similar to each other. With that being said, Eisenman’s exhibit definitely stood out the most to me. My favorite piece of work that was on display was probably the painting titled Beasley Street. This painting was produced in 2007. I really like her style of painting because it is animated, yet somewhat realistic at the same time. I felt that this piece in particular was the most interesting because it has so much going on. This work includes everything from monkeys, children, mummies, and people in wheelchairs, dogs, and sailors. The painting takes place at night and seems to be in a main part of the town. It almost seems as if there is chaos or a disaster in the town because so many different kinds of people are there, regardless of their situation. I found this painting the most interesting when I went to the exhibit.