Event 3 Fowlers Museum

I am excited that I had to chance to visit the Fowlers one last time before graduating. Upon entering the museum I was particularly taken aback by the construction of the artwork.

The first mannequin I came upon was made completely of women's bras when examined up close. While there wasn't any particular defining characteristic for the faceless mannequin, I believe symbolically the main significance comes from materialism. Also in terms of originality, the entire artwork is created from a singular piece of bra in a repetitive fashion to create everything from the hat to the dress. This may symbolize that fashion and designs are simply building off of fundamental units, such as a plain bra.

Art and Medicine:
As a incoming medical student, the conglomeration of internal organs particularly caught my attention. The first thing I noticed was the placement of the organs : where the heart, kidney, and various organs were molded together in an unfamiliar orientation rather than according to their respective anatomy. After looking closer at the overall structure of the artwork, I came to see how each of the organs fit and near-perfectly "caressed" on another. Another perspective I formulated was that human evolution is not perfect, but rather an ongoing process. Evolution does not have a direction or purpose to create what is best, but rather it is a process that build upon what is currently available to work with. Essentially, the artists who created this work had limited amounts of organs, and also did what he/she could to create a functional series of human organs.

The artwork on acupuncture was the next medically related artwork that caught my attention. The underlying side of the musculoskeletal unit is embedded into a tree trunk, that possibly symbolizes nature and that the underlying part of a human being is essentially "one with nature." Thinking back to my background in traditional chinese medicine and acupuncture, I began to recall how fundamental chinese medicine principles are embedded with using the understanding of nature and balance to diagnose human diseases. I believe this artwork perfectly captures the principle of alternative medicine.

 This particular artwork caught my attention and took a while before I was able to figure out what was going on. From the picture we can see that a woman's head is centered and posted between a pair of legs without the body. My first impression was to comment on the switch between orientation of the foot and the head. My next impression was the missing body. While the anatomy is not exactly precise, I realized that the artwork captured the most important parts of the human anatomy- the head that carries out consciousness and thought process and the legs that move accordingly. However, I realize the interpretations are highly diversified.

Picture with a museum curator

This work of art perfectly captures the way American culture has come to label those from the middle east. This phenomenon is mainly attributed to the media culture and art. In the portrait, the same individual could easily match the profile of an extremist, terrorist, and fundamentalist as well as that of a refugee. Similar to artistic propagandas during the world war I and II, the way media art has portrayed middle Easterners follows the similar effect. While this work of art doesn't necessarily pertain to the overlap between the art and sciences, the artwork clearly demonstrates the how art penetrates almost every aspect of the way we, as a culture, perceive and judge those around us.

All in all, I believe the Fowlers Museum provided many artwork