QUALITATIVE RESEARCH PROJECT: CORNELL FINE ARTS MUSEUM Winter Park, Fl. Featuring the works of Peter Schreyer, Kara Walker, and Tobi Kahn

     The Cornell Fine Arts Museum on Rollins College carries on a tradition of culture and arts in Winter Park that goes back more than a century in Central Florida. I was able to get a guided tour of three featured artist each with a different and diverse view of the world that comes through in their art. I enjoyed the show and felt privileged to be able to get this view of the world thru the eyes of these artist.

     The first Artist was Peter Schreyer and his exhibit titled “Returning Home”. Peter Schreyer is a Swiss-born landscape and documentary photographer based out of Winter Park. His work has been displayed in over one hundred shows across the U.S. and Switzerland. Although he is most known for his black and white pictures of Florida he recently went back to his home village of Pieterlen to take the pictures for this show.  

 

1: Town Center with Historic Schoolhouse, Pieterlen, Switzerland, 2013.

 

 

     The second artist on exhibit is Kara Walker titled “Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated). Walker is a renowned African-American Artist who used 15 iconic prints from Harper’s that chronicled Union troop movement during the Civil War. Walker than superimposed her black silhouette figures over them. This marks the first time she had incorporated her work with historic documents. This gives us a telling view of how African-Americans feel stereotyped and depicted in post-Civil War America.

 

  

 

    

The last featured on exhibit was Jewish Artist from New York Tobi Kahn with “Reverie” and his focus on the transformative beauty of nature. He also has a strong interest in recording and preserving memories in traditional symbols with a modern flare. His use of abstract shape and texture infused with bold colors is a stark difference to the black and white works of our last two artist. I enjoyed his art most of all and could feel the texture in every paint stroke.

 

 

 

Overall I really liked this exhibition and gave me some insight on how three very different artist view the world based on their very different backgrounds and cultures. I was captivated by the crisp B&W images of the first two artist and their totally different views on art. Peter reaching back to his past to bring us images of his youth in Europe, or Kara with her abstract black silhouettes of stereotyped blacks in a post-Civil War America. Last when we look at the work of Tobi Kahn we see the strokes just jumping of the canvas and wanting to be touched. The stunning use of colors really blew my mind and was a refreshing alternative to the black and whites of the previous exhibits. 

I think my biggest take away from this whole experience was that just because they weren't part of my culture, I may never have had this experience had it not been part of this assignment. I want to Thank you for this as it will help me be a better educator in the future. I really hope that others visit this wonderful free museum and gain this experience for themselves.