Monday 24/11/08

We started the day with a walk around the streets and went to a couple of shops. We stopped in for lunch at MacDonald’s. This was different from the Australian franchise experience with different meal options and larger sizes. At 12:30pm we all met in the courtyard of the Hostel, where we had a quick brief of the day and started walking to Parsons College, for a tour of the department of Fine Arts. It was really interesting to see the working spaces that students use, and to learn about the different assessment they have to complete. After a quick lunch we then headed to MoMa (Museum of Modern Art). This was an awesome experience but was hard to take everything in as there was so much art work to look at in the six floors of exhibitions.

The special exhibition by Joan Miro – Paintings and Anti-Paintings 1927-1937 was my favourite, in particular the Paintings based on Collages and Pastels. On the fifth floor, Gino Severini’s Armored Train in Action stood out, with the use of three main colours of blue, green and yellow. The Vincent van Gogh exhibition was also brilliant as I hadn’t really seen much of his work. I also really enjoyed the Architecture and Design and Photography collections. All in all, it was a great experience, and I will certainly have to go back there for a second visit.

At 7:30pm, we went to the film screening at The Sculpture Center and Anthology Film Archives to watch La Region Centrale. It portrayed a mountaintop in North Quebec, in different angled shots. I liked the first 15 minutes of the film but then felt like it was very repetitive and I became quite bored, however it was a great experience.