Semester 4

National Building Museum

2/14/26, Washington DC

#museum #architecture

I really enjoyed my visit to the National Building Museum. As someone who is majoring in architecture, this museum has been on my bucket list for a long time. The museum is comprised of 7 exhibits that wrap around an incredible atrium space with massive columns. The exhibits showed things like how material is used in architecture, scale (and even lego) models of famous buildings, the psychological effects of strategic urban planning, and more. However, what piqued my interest the most was not the material shown, but rather the methods they chose of displaying it. For example, one of the exhibits showed mini-curations in drawers that people could open (bottom left image). This process of making users open drawers makes the discovery of these collections much more intentional, as one has to do the work of revealing them. Another interesting method of display was an array of trace paper drawings (top left). In architecture school, we do things called "pin-ups" where we pin all of our process work to the wall for our professor and peers to see and critique. The display emulates this, with drawings loosely pinned in a very rough, frazzled composition. This makes viewers feel what the artist felt in the early stages of their work. These choices made the displays feel much more intimate, and provided a great experience for users.

Arts TRYathlon #2: Choose Your Own Adventure

Event Logistics (date, venue/organization, title of event)

(A tag indicating the category of art this event represents. Tags include: #visualart, #music, #theater, #dance, #film, #literature, and #presentation. You can add more than one tag to your event if it blends artistic mediums or disciplines.)

Draft a 200-300 word reflection analyzing your experience. Reflections should be detailed, yet concise - use examples to support your statements, and make each sentence count! The goal of this reflection is to build your critical thinking skills by making connections to what you have learned in Arts Scholars colloquium, your major, and/or an Arts Scholars supporting course. In your reflection, aim to apply, analyze, or evaluate (see Bloom's taxonomy below). In other words, define apply the concepts you have learned in Arts Scholars colloquium, your major, or an Arts Scholars supporting course to explain the impact and significance of the event you attended. We recommend you draft your reflection first in a word processing document saved to your computer or google drive.

Opera Maker Mixer

2/13, Clarice, The Alchemists

#Opera

Attending the staged reading of Alchemists at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center honestly shifted how I think about opera. Since it was a new work reading, the stripped-down staging and minimal costumes made me pay way more attention to the voices and the story itself. It connected back to Arts Scholars ideas about breaking something down to its core to really understand its intent, and I think that’s exactly what this format did. There was also something really interesting about how collaborative it felt, like you could sense the interaction between the performers, and how the piece was still open to change, which felt similar to critiques in studio where feedback actually shapes the outcome. What stuck with me most is that the “unfinished” quality made the experience more engaging, not less, because it exposed all the decisions and possibilities behind the work instead of hiding them, and it made me realize that creative work, whether it’s opera or architecture, is way more about process and iteration than just the final product.

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