Describe cultural events/ visual arts

Midterm/Cultural Events Option 1: Visual Arts
For this midterm paper you need to either attend visual arts event, like a museum/gallery, or go to a performing arts event, like a play, professional musical performance, or the ballet. Below is the prompt for the visual arts option. Please see the next page in the module for the performing arts option.
For a visual arts event you will need to go to a museum/gallery like the Carnegie Arts Center in Turlock or the Haggin Museum in Stockton, which are local, or you can travel a bit further to Sacramento to visit the Crocker Art Museum or to San Francisco to the DeYoung, Asian Art Museum, Museum of Modern Art, or the Legion of honor. If you take a trip to one of the major museums listed in San Francisco or Sacramento, you will receive 5% extra credit on this paper. You can also attend the art gallery at MJC or CSU Stanislaus, which are free! The webpages for each of the museums are linked above if you click the museum name. Make sure to check them out before going to see what their hours are, how to get tickets, etc.
I know that the pandemic has made it to where some people can’t safely do as many things as others and some students just aren’t able to take personal excursion for the class. If for some reason you are unable to, please contact me for an alternate assignment.
Directions for Visual Arts Event:
The idea is that you tour a museum, write about your experience as a viewer, and select one work of art to write about in depth. You must include an image of the work of art that you write about in an appendix at the end of your essay. Not including an image will result in a failing grade as I cannot effectively grade an essay about the visual arts without seeing the art.
Use your lecture on writing about the arts in the Week 1 Module and Philip Bishop’s A Beginner’s Guide to the Humanities to guide you through the process of writing your essay. I have provided PDFs of the chapters you need on the readings page in this module. This guide has a chapter for painting, one for sculpture, etc. Each chapter has vocab terms with their definitions, contextual information, and a template of questions to fill out that creates an outline you can use to help you write your essay. In addition to these resources the guiding questions below will also help you.
General Questions About Your Experience as a Viewer
Have you ever visited a fine art museum before?
Where did you take your tour and what made you choose this museum?
What was your experience like?
What was it like seeing art in person? How was it different from looking at art online? Pros and cons?
Questions for Your Selected Artwork
IDENTIFY/DESCRIBE:
What artwork did you choose? Give citation details (Artist, title, medium, date, culture, artistic movement, etc)
Give an overall description of what you see
Describe it in more detail using appropriate vocabulary from the course
ANALYZE:
What is the context of this artwork? This is where you can talk about the history of the work and/or the artist, who commissioned it, etc.
Does it contain any symbolism?
What does it mean? Consider the intended meaning of the artist and what you think it means
What value does this work have?/How does it impact viewers?
RESPOND:
This is where you write about your personal response to and feelings about the work of art.
How do you relate to this work?
How did it make you feel?
Did it remind you of something? Why did you choose it?
Willian Harris, Market Street Color, photograph comes up online

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