The Cocktail Party Effect

Chicano Park The first time I went to Chicano Park was in March of 2015 while on a service project to San Diego with Fordham University’s Global Outreach Program . At the time, the park’s art felt life-changing. However, a lot on this project seemed life-changing, so I am not sure if my perception of Chicano Park is warped by rose-colored glasses. My opportunity to figure out the true impact of Chicano Park came again as I visited a friend in San Diego in August 2019.  The park itself consists of murals pained under the merge between Interstate 5 and the Coronado Bridge entrance. It is hard to miss the bright and colorful images that I have come to associate with Mexican art as I drew nearer to the park. The feeling I got seeing the art on my horizon reminded me of my favorite TV quote, “… [it] made me feel warm inside like glitter was exploding inside me. ” 1  My first mission was to find all the murals that had stuck with me from my list visit. I found this one mural that r

Entrance to the PostSecret exhibit The key word for the Museum of Man is interactive. There were a number of exhibits that engaged its audience with methods as simple as writing down fears and tying them to a dreamcatcher in the Monsters exhibit. But PostSecret , the winning exhibit for audience interaction, takes engagement to another level as the entire content was created by regular people. PostSecret is a collection of secrets written on post cards from average people, all sent to the curation of Frank Warren who began the project in 2004. Strangers would anonymously mail personal secrets to Warren which are now read and relatable to other strangers. I greatly appreciated PostSecret’s ability to have me empathize and not just sympathize with nameless strangers. I think the existence of this exhibit demonstrates a social cry for connectivity that many seem to be lacking. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but PostSecret is not a unique concept. As a native New Yorker,

Kangaroo (2017) by Michael Cook Admittedly, photography is not my favorite medium, but I wanted to give the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego a fair chance. I do not hate photography, I just appreciate other mediums (like painting) more. With the ease of a smartphone camera and the abundance of images on social media, photography seems commonplace to me. While I may be indifferent about photography, I have always wanted to go to Australia; luckily for me, the exhibit is called  “Defining Place/Space: Contemporary Photography from Australia.” The exhibit was divided by individual artists who gave a brief summary of what they hoped to achieve in their series of chosen photos. Through this exhibit, I was able to identify what I believe to be the unique strengths of photography. A Moment in Time and Patrick Pound Patrick Pound is a Melbourne-based artist whose presented work is a series of photos that he found making a complication called Air Moving Right . All

The Arch (1975) by Alexander Calder The theme of the current exhibit at Storm King Art Center in Orange County New York is follies . ‘Follies’ indeed is a word I would use to explain the first portion of my visit to this center. My trip to Storm King was broken up into an outdoor and indoor portion—I favored the latter greatly.  Outdoor sculptures, mostly abstract froms, make up the permanent collection of Storm King. The outdoor location of these sculptures is based in necessity as their size cannot be confined under a ceiling; the height range is between 67cm and up to 15m. There is something about wadding through grass, getting eaten alive by bugs, and the wind blowing away your map as you attempt to figure out what you are seeing that makes the exhibit less appealing. While I do love the great outdoors, I did not think they mixed well with art. This experience emphasized for me the importance of the space in which the art is placed. The location might not have to ad

Entrance to the exhibit The theme of this year’s MET Gala was ‘camp,’ prompting celebrities to dress in outrageous outfits. At the time of the event’s photos overwhelming my Instagram feed, I had largely dismissed camp as something to be appreciated only by teenagers abusing a Snapchat filter. Personally, camp just seemed unsophisticated and, well, weird. However, the Camp: Notes of Fashion exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art showed me the nuances of camp revealing a complex and elusive concept.   Presentation Camp is an attitude of sorts well captured by its French origin se camper which means ‘to flaunt’ or ‘to posture;’ camp is not one thing, but rather a complicated and calculated art of presentation.  Large parts of camp are related to how one stands to create an ideal form or ‘beau ideal’ such as contrapposto—standing in a way in which the arms and shoulders balance out the hips and legs—and often having an arm akimbo—hands on one’s hips with elbows