Essay #2 - My MOMA and Teaching Experience

I headed to the MOMA last Friday for the first time, and it was an awesome experience. I saw a lot of kinds of art which I feel I wouldn't be able to find in places other than a museum like this one. I feel like this museum has a lot of variety, which keeps things really interesting; every time I turned a corner or headed up another floor, I had no idea what I would find. I definitely plan to go back at some point. 

There was one exhibit of the museum that really caught my interest, though, moreso than the rest. It was a room filled with different architectural models showcasing all kinds of buildings, some of which ended up being built while others were never made. I love architecture AND miniatures, but I never really had the chance of seeing models up close like this, so I absolutely loved looking at all of them. However, I particularly loved this one:

This piece is called Minna no Mori Gifu Media Cosmos by Toyo Ito, and it is a model of a library and community center located in Gifu City, Japan. For those curious, here is a picture of what it looks like. Isn't it amazing?

In terms of the model itself in the museum, though, I fell in love with the design of the buildings (especially the roofs) and just the structure as a whole; I found it quite aesthetically pleasing. I loved the intention behind the idea, too. Toyo Ito came up with the concept as part of his focus on building a sense of community, which was especially significant considering this was taking place right after the recent earthquake in Japan.

Before sitting down to teach, I made sure to practice going over some notes regarding the classification and visual elements of the piece. Here's what I came up with:

• For starters, I noted that this piece was a 3D sculpture (or model) made using 3D printed resin, polystyrene board, and paper. 
• It is representational as it is depicting something that is very much real, and the objects within the piece are easily identified.
• In terms of colors, there's a lot of white. We can also see some red and green used; red and green being complementary colors. However, color is obviously not a focal point here.
• There's a variety of organic and geometric shapes. The trees, for example, are organic. The squares and rectangles within the gate are geometric. 
• While not completely throughout, the gate has a pattern using the continuation of squares--almost like netting.
• There's a lot more negative space towards the outside of the gate, and a lot less inside. If you look closely, you can even see that there are a lot more people (represented by the teeny tiny stick figures) inside. I think this helps to establish a sense of liveliness for the structure, as if the community really feels alive within that gate (which I imagine is what architects hope for when they build community centers like this).

I decided to teach my dad, who loves learning, but doesn't actually know that much about art at all. The experience was actually really neat! As someone with an interest in teaching, it was pretty fun and was actually a learning experience for myself, not just for my dad. It was a little funny because I only have experience teaching people younger than me (I was a tutor for a few years) and not people older than me, but especially not my dad. He's usually the one giving me lectures and teaching me things, so maybe it felt a little odd to him too.

As someone similarly mentioned below, I had to be prepared to answer questions I didn't quite know the answers to 100% of the time, so I ended up making educated guesses. For example, when talking about color, my dad asked me, "there's a lot of white. Why is that?" He probably knew I didn't have the answer, but worked with me and patiently waited as I came up with one. "You know, while I'm not entirely sure, I think a reason why they might choose to use so much white is because it's a lot easier to look at the intricacies of the structure that way. If he used an actual color, like orange for example, it would be a lot harder to note all the little nooks and crannies, right? I imagine it's also much easier to see shadows with white, which is a big deal for architects." I said something to that effect.

My dad just sort of nodded and continued looking at the piece. Unbeknownst to him, though, was how proud I felt in that moment for coming up with a decent answer on the spot! Hopefully I was at least somewhat accurate. 

I really enjoyed asking him questions. He mentioned that one thing that stuck out to him immediately was the curvature of the roofs, so I asked him what he thought the artist had in mind when coming up with that design. I think he actually gave a really great answer; he mentioned that the circular roofs seemed a lot more free and inviting. "There are no corners," he said, which helps bring people together. I think that lines up perfectly with what Toyo Ito had in mind, so I was really impressed.

Aside from throwing questions back and forth, which I really liked, I made sure to teach him all about the visual elements at play and their importance in all kinds of art. I think he really liked learning about that as he never really realized that the visual elements in art were really a "thing"; he kind of just assumed people make it and that's that. Which is actually exactly what I used to think before learning about them myself.

In conclusion, this little project was a lot of fun. My favorite part was definitely teaching my dad, and it made me want to keep teaching other people about art too. I'm also excited to return to the MOMA and experience the things that I missed as well as re-experience the things that I saw last week!