The Gallery of Crossed Destinies
Video Transcript:
Mount Greylock Regional High School
I tried to be very attentive to who exhibited the most genuine enthusiasm for class. Not just the kids who most did their homework, not the ones who never did, but the ones who seemed genuinely interested in this subject.
Well, I thought it was a really fun thing to sort of see you know to go down into the dark depths of the basement and see all the cool artwork which was down there. I was sort of sad because we didn’t get to be there for that long. I could have spent just hours and hours in there looking at everything.
Originally, when we had been looking at the art and figuring out how to lay it out, we looked at it in a more superficial sense, looking at the shapes and the colors.
But then we started thinking more in depth about the artwork, and decided it would be beneficial for us to go on the emotions that the artwork portrayed because that’s why art is created.
So we chose one quote for each category that we arrived at, and we color-coded the word or the category that matched the artwork, and we also color-coded the bottom of the sculptures to the word in the quote.
At first we kind of looked at all of the paintings and these really stood out because they reminded us of Rome and Greece and especially the gold colors, and the copper colors, they really stand out as triumph.
When we went for knowledge, we sort of tried to find the pieces with any sort of writing, any sort of nod to learning, knowledge, literature. It’s a quote from Confucius that sort of makes you rethink your look on knowledge. I know a lot of people, when they think of knowledge they think how many facts do you know, how many things do you know from the top of your head. But if you don’t know something and you know that you don’t know it, then that’s knowledge. It’s not knowledge when you pretend to know something that you don’t.
The quote was interesting and thought-provoking about what serenity actually is, in that it is not being free of troubles but being peaceful while you’re surrounded by trouble.
We picked out that one for sadness and pain because it’s a sculpture of a face and it’s a painful kind of screaming way. So we thought it described it well.
Temptation is such a bittersweet section and there are so many different aspects of it. I like this because we got to like look so closely at all the pieces and see like in depth what they are and how they make us feel and everything, you know it’s really nice to get to do that.
I realize that there’s a lot more work involved. It wasn’t just the art, it was like the light and the surrounding environment with the art.
I just like having the experience of curating the gallery and seeing that it is harder than someone would think. I mean it is very difficult to collaborate on things, especially with so many people. But the end result ended up being a nice in-the-middle compromise between us all. So it worked out very well. This is all a great group of kids.
Seeing how much curators have to go through just to get all the artwork in the right place, taking out pieces that won’t fit, moving things around, getting coloring schemes.
Coming and seeing that wall text and light can change the way you think about the piece and almost change the mood, and it’s interesting now to walk around the other galleries and see what the curators did to make the art to change the mood of the room.
I thought the windows made a big difference, it was actually lighter, and it helped the whole exhibit I think.
The most rewarding part was seeing the final product just everything that we’ve been working on for these past few weeks and all the artwork just exactly how we planned and all our work with the colors and all the coordinating.
People will often ask how can you work with high schoolers? If you see this group work together or you look at their exhibit and see what they’ve accomplished, you’ll know the answer to that question.