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Historical Method Blogs
Blog 1: First Important Thing I Learned This Week
This week was an introduction week being that us scholars just started classes after returning from a long winter break. My first day in Historical Methods was very informative, even after reviewing the syllabus and expectations. I signed up for a new site known as RefWorks which is a web-based bibliography and database manager that allows you to create your own personal database by importing references from text files or online databases and other various sources that I can use for future research assignments and more. In addition we got our first assignment which was a reading based on a very known Artist/ Teacher by the name of Ben Shahn, who was also a social realist and humanist who used his art to express his beliefs and demonstrate important moral issues and express profound social messages. To conclude this blog, the last I received in addition to the other assignments was to sign up for this cool computer software which introduces me to a new form of blogging and a personal online creation (My first website).
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Blog 2: Second Important Thing I Learned This Week
Starting my second day of class I received another assignment which was to finish the first assignment by its due date Jan. 30, which includes wrapping up my final blog for this week. Overall I want to say I learned a lot of new things about art after reading the article on Ben Shahn and I am starting to view it from a different perspective. Art isn’t about “commercializing past achievements” according to Ben Shahn but is about, “creating a piece that derives from the importance which the artist themselves places on it”. Art is more than colors, pictures, images, posters, movies, acting, a commodity, a story, art is education and Ben Shahn made sure he treated each piece as such and made sure his audience knew that as well. Every piece Shahn created was relatable and had some relation to social/political problems and that may have been the case for the simple fact that Shahn was an activist, along with being an artist/teacher/ social realist and humanist. To conclude this post I took in a lot this week as far as learning new things about how to find different resources all the way down to creating a website, this week once again was very informative and our assignments were all beneficial.
Ben Shahn
The H-I Exhibit
Welcome To H-I Exhibit!
Here you will be shown artwork and beautiful visuals that depicts what an amazing life Tahani Helms-Ishmael lived. These visuals will show her lifespan in chronological order starting from the day she was born going all the way to her passing. Tahani’s hobbies and daily activities will also be showcased and each exhibit will be labeled by letters.
Ex: (“Exhibit A”, “Exhibit B”, “Exhibit C”, ETC).
Tahani will be portrayed no other than a very artistic and talented human being who enjoyed to do a lot of things because that’s who she was.
Born June 21st,2000
( First Day Of Summer)
Lived And Grew Up In Plainfield
(Born In Newark)
Started School At The Age Of 3
Completed School at 22
Graduated From William Paterson University
Class Of 2022
Played Basketball
(From age 4-19)
Created Music
(From 2014- Until Passing)
Enjoyed Concerts
(Kendrick Lamar D.A.M.N Tour)
Was a Creator
(Created A Clothing Line)
And
(Established A Business)
Did Photography
Do You Think Ben Shahn Is A Museum Or A Gallery?
I believe Ben Shahn is both a museum and art gallery but I will decide on an art museum because an art museum is a museum devoted to one or more fields (dealing with objects). The emphasis here is on the ownership and preservation of important collections. “The finest collection of Oriental ceramics in the southwest is in that art museum” and I feel like that is the focus of the Ben Shahn center versus it being an art gallery which is a room or building for the display or sale of works of art.
Blog 3: Two Important Things I Learned Week Of Feb. 3rd-9th
This week I learned two important things, with the first thing being the Ben Shahn gallery and the second being terms used to describe what is, what’s in and the difference between galleries and museums. I learned more about what the Ben Shahn Gallery consisted of as far as collections and why the gallery decided on those collections, I also learned how the gallery came to be and what the importance of the gallery was. Next I learned new terms that are all related to the arts describing and defining everything from “objects” all the way down to “Planetarium” and more. This was week was very informative and I am looking forward to next weeks info.
Blog 4: Two Important Things I Learned… Week Of Feb 13th-20th
This week the material was very short than the material I learned the previous weeks but this week I learned how to do an audio exhibit tour putting together selective pieces showcasing how Ben Shahn displayed the rural USA during the Great Depression, explaining the significance of each photo I chose making sure they were powerful displaying exactly how rough that time period was, in addition to that I also learned how to cite exact sources properly.
Blog 5: Important Things Learned The Week Of Feb 25th-March 5th
This week we started covering a new topic that shares a relation to what we will be doing for our final project, we started working on and studying what “finding aid” is and based of our in class assignments and classwork finding aid is a tool containing detailed, indexed, and processed information about a specific collection of records within an archive, we started using finding aids to take a lead on our final project and search through archives in the school library finding documents that share a relation to the Ben Shahn gallery.
Tahani's Historical Method Blog 