The title of post is a book written by my favorite Japanese artist (and actually my comps artist), about his studying life in Europe. By organizing his letter to his family during his stay in Europe, he re-examined the period of his life spending abroad, before he started his real career as an artist. It…
Taking Pictures of People Taking Pictures of David
Going to see a work of art that’s so canonical that its fame almost overshadows itself as just a work of art was quite a fascinating thing. In July I spent a weekend in Florence and was lucky enough to visit Michelangelo’s David, a work that so iconic that it seemed like in every Italian…
Landscape Paintings in Contemporary Art World
During our visit to many of the museums and exhibitions in Italy and Germany, I have found myself especially attracted by landscape paintings. I have many quick answers to the question “why I love landscape painting”: because I study biology and enjoy ecology the most; because I spent my childhood living next to a forested…
Old Generation Art Viewing
I am always fascinated to see elder travel groups gathering around contemporary art piece with a young guide to explain art to them. They sometimes seem a little bit out of the place, as being too disciplined and organized for the contemporary art world, which is more free-style, or a better term, messed-up. But this…
Berlin’s Jewish Museum
The Jewish Museum in Berlin may be one of the best well-designed museums I have seen. Featuring an unconventional architecture, the museum dedicates different sections to the Jewish community before, during, and after the Holocaust. It is a space for reflection and for hope. The path of the museum starts with the underground, called the…
Traveling as a woman of color
In one of my conversations with Hibo, we talked about how different – how much easier – our study abroad experience would have been had we been white men. We have gotten exhausted with having to be constantly aware of looks and remarks. However, I’ve also met and had the best interactions with other Vietnamese people…
Art Tourism in Europe
During my time in Europe, I have visited an abundant amount of museum, and I have gone to some of the largest exhibitions in the globe: the 57th Venice Biennale, Documenta 14, and Skulptur Projekt Munster. My ten weeks in Europe contained a lot of art seeing and touring around. Collectively, the art that I’ve…
Nilima Sheikh – Terrain: Carrying Across, Leaving Behind
Perhaps one of the most underrated, understated pieces that I was in love with at Documenta is Nilima Sheikh’s Terrain: Carrying Across, Leaving Behind at the Neue Galerie. A sculpture of sixteen canvas scrolls, attached next to each other in a wooden frame. On each scrolls, Sheikh paints figures and landscapes, while printing stories, prose,…
On a high horse, hopping from bubble to bubble
Before going on this OCS trip, I have never taken an art history class, despite being an artist and having a great interest in looking at art. Towards the beginning of the program, reaching Venice, I was definitely in awe of the sights and the surroundings as a first time tourist in Europe. The Biennial…
Celebrity Sighting in Venice??? (Fascination with the Media in Two Works)
Venice is truly a place for celebrity sighting, considering we stumbled into Joe Jonas in a dark alley on a random weekend night; however, seeing Mickey Mouse, Alec Baldwin and Julianne Moore left me thinking a lot for many weeks to come. I saw Mickey Mouse at Punta Della Dogana, and boy I couldn’t believe…