Courier, University Art Museum, University at Albany, State University of New York

When joining this class I was very hesitant over how much I would enjoy the class and how well I would succeed in it. I have always appreciated art, but never knew much about it. When traveling through Europe one of my favorite things to do is to go to the museums. I loved going because I felt that the art in the places I was going showed great cultural value and would let me become more worldly and educated. The four places I most enjoyed going to museums was in Paris, Vienna, Greece and New York City. I was amazed and taken aback by the beautiful art.
As class began and I started learning more about contemporary art, and art movements that took art out of a pastoral and portrait phase, I started to see that my art education was very limited. At first I was angered that someone could take a urinal and put their name on it and call it art. I asked myself, 'what talent does this show?' My view on art and my view on culture started to change as I saw that there was more to art then pretty pictures and history. Learning about different kinds of art and artists made me aware that art represents more than a pretty picture hanging on a wall, it represents culture, history, emotions.  Artists today seem to be trying to grasp the viewers emotions and shaking them upside down.
My partner Matt and I went to the Courier University Art Museum at UAlbany about half way through the semester. Looking back now I feel that it was the perfect time because if I had gone in the beginning I would not have been as educated and prepared for a different type of museum I had never encountered. Walking into the museum we were complexed and confused, we searched to find the entrance and when we walked in there was no one inside the museum. There was a woman at what seemed to be the front desk and I asked her for a pamphlet on the museum and then asked if I could take pictures. I found it very odd that we did not have to pay to enter and that the woman at the front desk didn't know whether or not I was allowed to take pictures. She went away and asked someone else and informed me that I was indeed allowed to take pictures. Matt and I started to walk around and the first thing we came to was  a video done by the artist Ann Hamilton. We were both excited to see that someone we had discussed in class was in the museum we were visiting. I took a brief look around the rest of the room and the walls seemed very bare and there seemed to be no pictures. This museum was nothing like anything else I had ever been to. As a whole the show was contemporary artists who based their work around the idea of words and typewriters. As a whole many of the works were letters repeated and put in different ways, there were actual typewriters displayed throughout time, and video displays.
We walked around the gallery looking at all the works and without needing to research the museum we instantly knew the theme based around the gallery. I had never been to a gallery before that had a theme, most of the museums that I have attended was mostly monumental pieces of work such as The Mona Lisa. One particular piece that grabbed my attention was "Zeno Writing" done by William Kentridge. This piece was a twelve minute video, I had never been to a museum where they were viewing a video so this right away grasped my attention. The video was a progression of time and modernity and was a little hard to comprehend but still held my attention. I can see why this piece was in this gallery because it represented the ideas of a book 'Confessions of Zeno' and because it depicted the revolution of machinery, such as a typewriter.

On the wall near the entrance of the museum was an introduction what we would be seeing it read " First patented in 1868, and marketed and sold by Remington Arms Company in 1873, the typewriter reached peak production in the mid 1970's. Deman began to wane in the 1980s with the advent of the word processor, followed by the personal computer. In 1995 Smith Corona, once the typewriters market leader, declared bankruptcy...... The exhibition "Courier" presents eleven artists who created works that are rooted in the physical, communicative, or iconic properties of the typewriter." It was great to see history of the typewriter by contemporary artists such as Leona Christie/Gavin Christie, Daniela Comani, Lee Etheredge IV, Ann Hamilton, William Kentridge, Matt Liddle, Elena del Rivero, Allyson Sttrafella, Ignacio Uriarte, and XU Bing.

All in all I was glad I went to the museum, it was an experience that I had never had before and it definitely broadened my horizon of art education and art appreciation. If I were to chose however between going to another museum like that or going back to The Louvre, I would have to pick The Louvre. It was a great experience and I learned a lot and especially enjoyed that Ann Hamilton was shown there because it connected greatly with what we had been learning in class.