This past week has been a pretty mellow week. This semester being my last semester, I wanted to make sure I built in as much time for myself as possible. I chose my classes in a way that gave me Thursday and Friday off. Since the semester’s workload hasn’t really picked up yet, I spend most of my days off watching movies and researching for my thesis project.
On Tuesday, my art history class took a field trip to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum for the exhibition opening of “Boston’s Apollo.” The show focuses on early 20th century American painter John Singer Sargent and his model Thomas McKeller. For years, it was not known that Sargent used McKeller, a young Black man, as his model for murals he painted at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. McKeller’s presence in the art was erased. However, the sketches of McKeller by Sargent for the murals were preserved by the museum and are on view for the first time. The show tells a story about him by combining the little that is known about McKeller with the social conditions of that time. The exhibition was a great connection to our class. Seeing the ways that McKeller was erased from history and only deemed worthy because of his body ties a lot with the questions we ask in our class about the Body and art.
I had a lot of fun with my classmates attending this opening. Everyone was dressed up with fancy food and drinks, not what I am used to at all. I do not have a ton of pictures from that night. But if you are in the area and would like to see the show, I recommend you do.
On Thursday, I went to see Upstage’s (Wellesley’s theater group) production of Fade, which was being directed by a friend of mine. The play centers on Mexican identity and follows a TV show writer as she strikes up a relationship with a janitor who works in the building. It dealt with questions of race, class and Mexican identity in very honest ways. The show was great and I laughed a lot. Upstage always puts on great shows. They are entirely run by students, from the lighting, to the set design, makeup, etc. It was cool to see how it all turned out knowing how much work went into it.
Until next time,
Laïssa