Brown vs. Board of Education Art Exhibit :: Art Museum Exhibit Segregation

Black and White Walking into Krannert Art Museum, I experienced something I have never experienced before. That something was actually analyzing and appreciating artwork. I have been around artwork before and have looked at many times and I have enjoyed it but I have never really sat down with art to break it down and notice the little details that make it so powerful. Today I did at Krannert Art Museum while looking at their Brown vs. Board exhibit. I was able to break everything down and notice the details and by doing this I got a much more influential experience out of it. At first glance it is the colors in the room that jump out at you and draws your attention most but after really looking around you see the colorfulness isn’t the what the artist wants to attract your attention but instead on all of the black and white all over the room which fits perfectly with the idea the exhibit is trying to get across. This idea is that blacks and whites are equal and together, as Americans, they are much more powerful then when they stand apart as whites and blacks. As soon as I walked into the exhibit I noticed it had kind of an eerie aura to it. The lights were dim and there was a peculiar silence that was only interrupted about every ten seconds or so by a low, almost electronic sounding, humming coming from one of the distant rooms. Also, every so often the lights would flicker a little and between that, and the movie that was playing on the side wall switching between clips, it gave the room a very sporadic supernatural atmosphere. I walked into the two different rooms and two things caught my eye. The brightly colored flowers and people wallpaper on the left side of the first room, and the huge colored picture of Brett Charles Cook, on the left side of the second room. I noticed that this huge portrait was done using mostly blue and orange paint, which may have been a way for the artists to get the students there to connect with the painting or just to catch their attention.