Reflection on Smart Museum

I love the team project very much, and I never know what is going to happen in the team project. It took us over half an hour to go to the Smart Museum of Art, but we had a great time both in the train and in the bus. Even though we didn’t talk about art, we talked about our individual academic goals and what we were planning to do in the future. It was a good bonding chance for the four of us.
Generally speaking, Smart Museum of Art is a small museum, and it gives the first impression that there is nothing worth to see. However, due to the amazing arrangement of artworks and special decoration inside, you can see a terrific world of art in the museum. Basically, there are two kinds of art inside, the western style and the eastern style. I am proud that the ancient Chinese paintings have huge influence at the University of Chicago. Amazingly, I saw one Chinese color painting inside the museum, and I was shocked because most of the ancient Chinese paintings were painted in ink. Moreover, this painting is not about landscape, the subject most ancient Chinese paintings refer to, but it is about a typical class in the past. The color is very light, and there are few kinds of color in the painting. Maybe that’s because the painter wasn’t able to manage the color in his painting. Therefore, my teammates didn’t like that Chinese painting.
The western artworks include the painting, the sculpture, and the video. The themes in these artworks vary: some are about the beautiful landscape, some are about the perfect human body, and some are about love. The most striking artwork for me is the Heartland project. The Heartland project exhibits many different kinds of artwork, such as a show, a video, and a boat. Sadly, we don’t have a chance to watch the show, but we can see the setting of the show. The materials and the tools in the show are very weird, because they use skull, nets, and other strange things. However, we love the boat, and we love the idea that the boat is the vehicle to the wonderland.
To sum up, the Smart Museum of Art didn’t strike me as much as the Art Institute of Chicago did. However, the smart museum enlarges my vision, and I have some thoughts about beauty. In the past, people always think that only the beautiful things can be marked as art, but some of the artworks in the smart museum are not beautiful. Therefore, I think that art is not about beautiful things, but the art makes the things beautiful. I am happy that I can have a chance to experience a new art world, and I hope my teammates will feel the same way.