Our day at the Mosex (Sex Museum)

After a delicious lunch at Cinema (located on 70th and 2nd, highly recommended) we trekked to the Museum of Sex. When you enter the museum, you are in the "gift shop." The layout was very complicated; the first exhibit was on the first floor on one side of the gift shop, then you have to go back through the lobby to the other side and upstairs to see the second exhibit.

We started off with Sex in the media..an awkward exhibit to say the least. We continued on to exhibits such as History of Condoms, History of STD's, and finally Sex Lives of Animals. We will refrain from discussing details however we would definitely say visit for yourself if you are interested. We actually did learn a lot from this museum and were a little bit shocked and amused by many of the things we saw. One exhibit had models of naked people that you could touch (we didn't), and in the animal section, there were enormous sculptures of dolphins and antelopes mating. We also saw a baby blanket made entirely of metal condom wrappers. Very interesting stuff..

I don't think either of us found the museum to be worth the $15 price tag, but it was still a memorable experience to visit. Unfortunately all the people that said they were going to come with us that day ditched, so we were on our own :(. We almost couldn't get a cab afterwards but we ended up finding one and making our train. Please see us for pictures as we don't want to be too explicit.

Love, J and K.

Overall Rating: 6

Student Friendliness: 5

Do we recommend visiting?: 7

The Guggenheim

Last Friday we visited the Guggenheim! This was by far our favorite museum to date. Similar to the MET, the Guggenheim is also located on 5th avenue on the Upper East of New York. Upon arriving at the Guggenheim we were surprised to see that not only was the museum flooded with guests, but there were two people working the admission ticket line so we had to stand in line for 20 minutes. Student admission was 15 dollars was kind of pricey; however it included a complimentary head phone set/guide for the museum which the other
museums we visited did not include in a purchase.

The coolest thing about the Guggenheim was its

aesthetically pleasing architecture. The museums completely white and it's built on a series of ramps that spiral upwards. The entire experience is like a journey, instead of walking back and forth from exhibit to exhibit you just walk up the spiral. Also another weird/interesting thing about the Guggenheim was that about every 10 minutes the voice of a weird lady singing would play through out the museum. It gave it the museum a kind of eery creepy feeling, but the headphone tour said that it was supposed to give of the feel of overhearing a woman singing throughout the museum.

Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed above the main level so we don't have any photos of our favorite pieces to display, but we will do our best to describe them.

A highlight/something peculiar about the museum was that from the ground level written along the three pillars

written "Earth to earth ashes to ashes dust to dust". We had no idea what this meant but it definitely added to the eery feel we got when we first stepped in the museum.

One of the first pieces we enjoyed was an Andy Warhol piece. At first glance it just looks like a really blurry orange photo. However after looking closer and listening to the guided tour we came to realize that this piece actually depicted an execution chair. Thanks to google images we have a picture of it for you. It was interesting to see a more morbid side to Warhol than we had seen at MoMA.

Another cool thing we noticed in Guggenheim was that they showed the same video by Marina Abramovic that we had seen at MoMA that depicted someone furiously washing a skeleton. It was cool to see how a lot of the museums have overlapping exhibits.

The art at Guggenheim encompassed a broad spectrum of artists whether it be by age, style, type of work, etc. For example, we saw an artist who's work was just a black canvas with tons of questions in white lettering ranging from "What will I do with my life?" to "Did you ever wish you were Christian?". To illustrate the broad spectrum of artists, there was a wing of the Guggenheim entirely dedicated to children's art work. Kind of weird to think that at age 5 you could be in one of the America's most popular museums. To be honest none of the art was that impressive, it really did look like the art we did at 5 years old....but maybe we're just jealous/bitter.

Like we said earlier there was an eery/creepy feel to the Guggenheim. A lot of the art had a sinister aspect to it. There were themes like slavery, torture, and the Holocaust. One of our favorites was a photograph of a bunch of fingers, a nose, and body parts sticking out through the dirt and a compact mirror that you could see the murder in the reflection in.

Perhaps it was the uncomfortable feeling that the Guggenheim gave us that made us enjoy it so much. Nonetheless, so far this is our favorite museum and we would strongly recommend that students our age take the time to visit when they're in NYC! It's a nice break from the ancient/cultural art that we see all the time.

Overall rating: 10

Student friendliness: 10

Do we recommend visiting?: 10

OMG!!!!! ALL 10'S!!!!!!!!!!! GO VISIT NOW!

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Last Wednesday we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC! Located on the Upper East Aide of New York, the MET is one of the most famous museums in America. After taking a taxi from Penn Station, we made it to the MET and made our way up the famous set of stairs that some of you may know from recent Gossip Girl episodes.Once we made it into the museum we were pleased to see that admission for students was only10 dollars (the cheapest we've seen thus far)! So, that was a major plus. However, since it is one of the most famous museums in America, and arguably world wide, it was EXTREMELY busy. Lines for admission tickets were quite long and overall the museum was really packed. People around us were speaking all different languages so it was really cool to be able to come for the day to such a world renowned tourist attraction.

We found this museum to be the most overwhelming. It was really hard to keep up with all of the exhibits and which cultural era each one represented. This is also another museum that we may recommend splitting the visit into two because of the breadth of the museum's pieces. However, due to ISP time constraints, our busy schedules, and for the sake of efficiency we were forced to jam pack this enormous museum into just 2 hours.

The first thing we saw was art from Ancient Greece. There were tons of naked statues and lots of artifacts such as coffins and

jewelry. One of the really cool things we saw was a large vase

covered in black and white geometric patterns. (See picture). We also saw a Roman exhibit which was very similar to the Greek exhibit, and some artifacts from Middle Eastern and Mesopotamian people. We got yelled at a lot for taking pictures with flash

Another thing we saw while at the MET, was a special Picasso exhibit. This exhibit was the busiest one we've seen all ISP, there was basically no room to take pictures of his paintings and everyone was crowded around each and every painting. They were supposed to be sexually explicit but most of them weren't, but regardless they were all very interesting. It's always breathtaking seeing such a famous artists paintings in person. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take many pictures because of security and because of all the people surrounding his work.

An additional highlight of the MET was a European art exhibit where we saw Impressionist &

Post-Impressionist painting and modern photography. We especially enjoyed portrayal a scene in the park. Julia recognized it as a pointillism from her AP Art History Class, which is painting style that used small distinct dots to form a bigger image.

Overall Rating : 7

Student Friendliness: 5

Do we recommend visiting: 7

Museum of Natural History

This week was a totally hectic week, Julia had her AP Art History Exam and her Spanish Lit exam and I had my Biology and Macro and Micro

Economics exams! Sadly, we only got to visit one museum

but starting next week we're doubling up on museums and will catch up on what we've missed out on.

On Monday we visited the Museum of Natural History! If you're not familiar with it, it's the museum from the movie Night at the Museum staring Ben Stiller. Once again, student admission into the museum was only 12 dollars for general admission, but if you wanted to see a special exhibit in addition (like an IMAX movie or a special show) it was 16 dollars and up. So, like MoMA, it wasn't too pricey and definitely well worth the 12 dollars.The first thing that caught our eye when we walked in were the famous dinosaur skeletons which we were very excited about seeing. They're absolutely enormous. The skeletons really set the tone for the rest of the museum in that they're breathtaking, extremely realistic looking, and very overwhelming. (It's not real by the way). We did not expect to be so fascinated by everything we saw.

We really liked the museum but from the second we walked in we were

really overwhelmed by all of the exhibits we wanted to see. To our right there was a butterfly exhibit, our left an "Asian Peoples" exhibit, and straight ahead was "African Mammals." We just didn't know where to start or how the best way to navigate through the museum was. When you first walk in it's kind of like maze-you can one of four doorways to go through and hope that somehow you'll make it back to where you started from and there are about five floors. Unfortunately, we got a little lost and I didn't make it back to the lobby of the museum, but I think we got to see most of it. If there's something we would do differently it would probably be to take a guided tour, because tour guides know where they're going and will make sure you get to see everything in the museum.

Without further ado, the first area of the museum we opted for was African and Asian

animals. Every knows that the Museum of Natural History is famous for its lifelike

portrayals of animals, so we immediately started off there. The exhibit didn't tell much of a story, it was honestly just really astounding depictions of animals. They literally looked like they were real, it was crazy! There were animals we had never heard of that were extinct or just very foreign. It got us excited for our upcoming trip to the Bronx Zoo.

Moving on, we went through the African, Asian, and South & Central American People exhibits. These were a lot more interesting and educational. Not that we remember much from

freshman year World History, but a lot of the information we were reading about did ring a bell (the Aztec history in particular). Something that we found really interesting that we

encountered in all of the cultural exhibits was the prevalence of shamanism in each culture. It always interesting when you see a parallel from somewhat opposite and independent cultures. For those of you who do not know, and to be honest Kara didn't know what it was either, but

thanks to Julia who just learned about Shamanism in her AP Art History Class, Shamanism is like a belief in human contact with the spiritual world. In a lot of ancient cultures it had a negative connotation, and it was more like being possessed than being a messenger of a higher being. In fact, come to think of it, the United State had its own version of shamanism-the Salem Witch Trial (hopefully that example helps you get a feel for what Shamanism is). Anyways, we thought that was really interesting how each exhibit had it's own depictions of Shamanism.

We also loved seeing all the clothing, jewelry, and ritual objects of each culture. We saw various kinds of Asian weapons, a model of Central American people around a campfire, and lots of beautiful African jewelry. It was like going in a time warp; something we probably otherwise never would have learned about or gotten to see.

We then proceeded to inarguably the best exhibit (both of our favorites) which was a history of the human being.

Human development and history is soooo incredibly

interesting and unbelievable. This exhibit began with a simple presentation of a strand of DNA and once we were done it went from a being just a strand of DNA to a full blown modern human. We saw hominid models, which were essentially three-foot tall, extremely hairy humans. We also saw models of Neanderthals and real Neanderthal skulls compared to human skulls. It was incredible to see how people have changed overtime and to really put our lives in a purely biological sense. It also made us think about the future of homo sapiens and how humans will further evolve.

It was so amazing, and human evolution in

general is just and incredible phenomena.

To end, we saw an exhibit on gems and minerals. We saw every kind of stone and a giant amethyst. One of Julia's favorites was a small collection of bright colored diamonds. The label said they were so rare, that only about 5% of diamonds are colored and only 2% of the colored ones are so heavily saturated as these ones. They were bright purple, blue, green, and orange, and were beautiful.

Overall, we really enjoyed the museum, although it was really overwhelming and it would probably take a full 24 hours to take in everything that's in there and thoroughly enjoy it. Also, we probably would have enjoyed the visit more if we went there with a purpose. By purpose we mean for example a class trip to study African animals, or to study astronomy, or biology. The museum has such a wide range of exhibits that are so incredibly thorough that it's probably best to see only exhibits related to one subject matter per trip. Nevertheless, we really enjoyed everything we got to see and would easily take a second trip to be able to soak up the rest of what the museum has to offer. An additional perk was being across from Central Park; we took the remainder of the day to walk around and reflect on everything we had just seen!

Overall rating: 7.5

Student Friendliness: 8

Do we recommend visiting: 10

Museum of Modern Art

We had a super fun day at MoMA! Though we were pressed for time we ended up seeing the whole museum, and thoroughly enjoyed doing so.

The first thing that was great about MoMA was

the admissions fee. For students (provided they have a school ID handy) can purchase admission into the museum for just 12 dollars!

Right off the bat we discerned that MoMA is definitely a student friendly museum that students our age should make an effort to visit.

When we first walked in, we saw a woman sitting on a chair facing another chair. The woman, who was the "artist" had been in that chair since March 1st. (Seem unfeasible, right? But it's true!) In a nutshell, what this 'piece' was-was the artist sitting in one

chair completely motionless and silent facing whoever chose to sit in the chair facing her for as

long as he/she

pleases. It was really bizarre, and to us just seemed to be a very official and high paying

staring contest. We were not so sure how this classified as art, but to each his own!

After being in disbelief of the first exhibit, we moved onto a Picasso exhibit. The Picasso exhibit was everything you would expect from a

museum, a bunch of very intricate/confusing paintings. There was nothing special or unique

about it, except (to avoid sounding ignorant) that it was Picasso, one of the greatest artists of all time.

Another highlight of our trip to MoMA was the The Andy Warhol exhibit. His works were very modern and to say the least, breathtaking. He took object so simple and obscure, like Cambell's soup cans and made them into beautiful masterpieces. We especially enjoyed the Marilyn

Monroe portrait, it was very modern and Julia had just learned about it in her Art History class. This portrait is meant to portray the tragedy of fame, and Warhol's eery use of colors definitely sends that message across.

Our last highlight from our trip was the feature exhibit on the very top floor of MoMA. Already exhausted from the train ride and the city/museum walking, Julia and I debated whether or not to even voyage onto the last floor, but thank god we did! This exhibit was the works of Marina Abramovic. When we first walked through we was as sign stating that no photos were to be taken because many of the pieces were live NUDE performers. They weren't lying. As we walked through we saw completely naked people standing face to face separated by a foot at the most, people laying down naked with skeletons on top of them, and other performers fully dressed just staring into each other's eyes. It was truly bizarre. If that wasn't weird enough,

these live performers were accompanied by very disturbing photos and videos. The videos seemed senseless, they were just naked people walking into one another and people flashing other people. In the weirdest exhibit we have ever seen, we were in utter shock . The most disturbing video of all was one of a woman, again completely nude, shoving a skull repeatedly into her abdomen. Once again, we left wondering, this is art? WE CAN DO THIS TOO ! Does that make us talented artists?

Some of the art we saw was truly "modern"art... meaning it looked like a 5 year old did it.

Overall, we enjoyed the museum, but a lot of the pieces were hard to consider 'art'. We guess it depends on one's definition of art. For example, here was a solid plain white square and a long

red rectangle with a line going through it. We could paint that ourselves and sell it!

Since this is our first post, we want to make it clear that we are being 100% honest in our blog and telling it exactly how we see it at the museum. We don't mean to insult or sound ignorant about the museums we see. The purpose of this blog is to publish what we think are museums and pieces that students our age will actually appreciate. We are not trying to be professional art critics, and honestly, we are not qualified to do so. We're trying to convey our views to people our age, not rule whether or not an artist is talented or not.

So without further ado,

Overall rating of the MoMA out of 10 (10 being the highest): 6.5

Student Friendliness: 8.5

Do we recommend visiting?: 7

http://perezhilton.com/2010-05-11-james-franco-at-moma

AHH!! JAMES FRANCO (You probably know him from Pineapple Express) went to MoMA and participated in that stare contest exhibit we were talking about. SOOOOO COOL, but frustrating we didn't happen to visit on the same day!