Thursday, December 27, 2012

Milwaukee Art Museum

I went to Milwaukee, Wisconsin today and took soom pictures to share with all of you.  Milwaukee has a Germanic flavor in their architecture.  There are a lot of church steeples and clock towers and there are some very old buildings in Milwaukee from the 1800s  Here are few of them:


 
Pabst Theater
 
 

Clock Tower
 

 
Press Building
 
 

Milwaukee Art Museum
 
 
The Milwaukee Art Museum had 4 floors of art including American art from colonial times to the present, Hollywood animation, furniture, modern art, and ancient artifacts from Egypt, Greece, and Rome.  What was interesting to me was the animation display.  The display showed how animation artists from Disney and Pixar actually used ancient artifacts, mythological art, and old architecture as their inspiration for many of their movies.  I have always noticed the great similarity between many films of today and ancient mythology and this exhibit proved to me that there was a direct connection.  I hope you enjoy the following photographs from the museum and perhaps you may find yourself there someday for a visit.
  

 







 
 
Animal legs and feet and mythological characters were added to furniture because there was a belief that the furniture had a life of its own.
 
 













 
 
 

 
 
 
 
The above 3 pictures are of Zoetropes.  The Zoetrope worked by spinning a strip of pictures around and viewing the moving pictures through the slits on the device.  The Zoetrope was the inspiration for Thomas Edison to invent the motion picture projector.  I had the Boy Scouts make their own zoetropes for a presentation I gave them.  You can find a zoetrope cut out on line and make one yourself or you can buy one.
 
 
 
 





 










 






 

This orange couch, side tables, and clock are from 1825/1830.  Can you believe it was not from the 1960s?
 





 





There were many more paintings, sculptures, and other forms of art.  By looking at these pieces of art, one can not only see the colors and styles of the artists, but they can see history as well.  The artwork shows clothing styles, religious beliefs, mythologies, distinctions between bloodlines, life styles, attitudes, and feelings of the people of the time.   I hope you get a chance to visit the Milwaukee Art Museum or an art museum near you.  Art and music are as important as math, science, history, and literature are.  It is just another form of expression and with it comes information.  I hope you have enjoyed this article on my blog, today.
 
 
by Rita Jean Moran (www.thelibrarykids.com)
 
Links: