Visit the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), or the New Museum. (Note: your student ID should get you free admission to any of these museums, check their websites before going to note opening hours, Covid policies, and to see if you need to book tickets in advance).
Select one artwork that you think is especially interesting; it can be any work in the show, and it can be “interesting” in whatever sense you want. Please be sure that the artwork was made after 1989 (a commonly used cutoff for contemporary art). Closely examine the work using the TABULA method, which is described by Ossian Ward in one of the readings you did for last week’s class. Take notes corresponding to each of the six steps.
Then write a response explaining this experience in detail, making reference to each one of the steps. For the more interpretative parts of the method (eg. “Assessment”), you might think about ways that the work seems (or doesn’t seem) “contemporary”; you might also think about how it relates to some of the questions we’ve been discussing in class. Your response should be about 500 words in length, which is roughly two pages double-spaced. Please upload it as a PDF or a Microsoft Word .doc using Brightspace.
A note: I’ve asked you to use Ward’s method not because it’s “correct” but because it’s useful, especially if you don’t have much experience viewing and writing about art. So please don’t worry about whether you’re doing things right, the most important thing is to spend time looking at one artwork as closely as you can.
