Museum Visit- MOCRA & SLUMA

I went to Museum of Contemporary Religious Art  and Saint Louis University Museum of Art.

My selfie at MOCRA:

& I totally forgot to take a selfie at SLUMA..


MOCRA
Some of the examples included:

•  Hermaphroditus by Ann McCoy which had a man and a woman intertwined with a rose at the bottom. 
• I felt this piece was really powerful because this connects to well with gender studies. Things are not as black and white as what the norms in our society would have us believe. I really liked this piece a lot. 
• Madonna & Child from The Life of Christ Altarpiece by Frederick Brown. This own showed emotion, severe affairs. 
• "At first she seems severe but then we notice that her closed eyelids are pronounced and glistening, as if she is tearing up in anticipation of her son's trials to come."
• I really liked this one as well. I have never seen a piece of Madonna & Child portrayed in this way. She is portrayed in the kind of way that most ancient Egyptian women are usually portrayed. This is really interesting to me because ancient Egyptian women are seen as usually being equal to mean and being powerful. 
• Zoe "Lorenz & her daughter"
• This was a piece of a woman with AIDS and her daughter. This was really powerful to me because the woman seem so content with her life. She wasn't portrayed as being someone who had stopped fighting because of the stigma our society puts on people with AIDS.  This was by far my favorite piece at MOCRA. 

SLUMA
Examples:

• Parts of a woman shown in Cubist Venus by Jim Dine 
• This one shows part of a woman's body drawn with cubic shapes. When I saw this piece, I immediately remembered when we talked about women being seen as objects to the point where showing a piece of a woman's body is totally normal. We see this in ads, tv, and now I realize in art as well. 
• Naked at rodeo in Rodeo Queen Study by Luis Jimenez 
• This one was a little odd to me. Instead of perhaps depicting a woman who maybe could be seen as being very talented at rodeo, the artist depicted the woman as half naked at the rodeo. I didn't like it. 
• Lot's of women naked 
• I didn't know how I should take this, honestly. In a way, the woman's body is being shown and not hidden, which I think is a good thing. On the other hand, that's not why people are focusing on. When looking at it, they are most likely focusing on the fact that it is just another female body whose only use is to be admired. 
• Lots of women showing their boobs
• I had a similar reaction to these as with the ones with the women completely naked. The only other thing that I noticed is that women were always shown with very large boobs, like that is the norm and the way woman should look. 

Overall, I didn't see a lot of women portrayed at either of the museums. It did seem that when women were portrayed in the stereotypical feminine roles such as a mother. If they were not portrayed in that way, then it was just in a sexual way. Basically women are shown within the stereotypical one dimensional way and it sucks...