Lightner Museum Observation

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The object I chose in the Lightner Museum is a painting with a gold frame. The medium in which it was created is oil on canvas. Featuring this piece is a man on a seat in front of a podium. He looks around the age of fifty, wearing a black cap and glasses. His clothing consists of a collared shirt, a coat, slacks, long socks to his knees, and black shoes. In one hand he holds a small book, which he appears to be reading from, and in his other hand he carries a brown stick about a foot in length. Standing in front of the man is a boy about ten years of age. He is standing with very straight posture and his hands by his sides. The boy is adorned with a blue vest, a white collared, long-sleeved shirt and brown pants. To the right of the man is …show more content…

One can infer this information based on the clothing, furniture, and architectural styles prevalent in the picture. The main figure that is central in the piece, the older man, fits the role of what appears to be a teaching position, where the boys that surround him are his students. The scene displayed here is one of an examination day. Each boy must take his turn addressing the teacher and answering some sort of test question, which the teacher prompts from a small booklet in his hand. The boy that is seated on the left side, who is dramatically depicted in a sobbing action, must have failed his examination. One could further infer, due to the teacher’s possession of a stick-like tool, that the punishment for such failure would have been a slap on the wrist or such. Another boy stands for his shot at the test, awkwardly clutching the fabric of his trousers. To the right of him, another boy crouches behind the teacher’s podium and out of the man’s view. His hand cupped beside his mouth, he secretly whispers the answers for his friend being quizzed. The children seated behind their desks in the far right hand corner have a collective look of mischief, as they are all in on the secret cheating that is going on in the front of the classroom. This group of boys symbolizes a cause for the act of cheating, as each boy wants desperately to avoid embarrassment, as so dramatically depicted by the sobbing child on …show more content…

It is the room immediately after exiting the elevator. In relation to walking into the room, the painting is in the back left corner. It is hanging on the wall separated from all other pieces of art. All the walls, the stands, and pillars are plain white. The only items in color are the other pieces of art. This room mainly consists of three dimensional objects. The painting has little to no relevance to this room what so ever. This painting is a comical piece and it is placed in a room with no emotion or general connection to anything else around it. It is displayed in a way which makes it clear that it is by itself. There is nothing close to it as well as nothing correlated to it in the same room. The only reason why that painting should be in that room is because it is a room of misfit pieces of art. The Lightner Museum as an institution repeats this lack of organization throughout its exhibits. Based on the history of the museum and how it started, it makes sense that there are random items placed in strange places. This may encompass the exact goal of the Lightner Museum, because it portrays the origin and the background of how the museum came about through the questioning of the arrangements by the visitor. Conspicuous consumption is exemplified through this painting and the museum because it was basically all created by overbuying and greed. It can be said that the single very reason anybody

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