On Saturday of this year’s parents weekend at Rutgers, we picked up Aaron at his dorm and walked around the College Ave campus, stopping in at Zimmerli Art Museum, and then explored New Brunswick a bit. Zimmerli is a smallish museum, made of tan brick that reminds me oh-so-much of the architecture in South Jersey.
Featured Holdings
Immediately to the left of the entrance was a gallery of Zimmerli’s featured holdings.
This piece played with the notion of famous historical figures whose most defining features–their faces–were obscured.
The Stoning of St. Stephen, by Jo El Lopez, plays upon the idea of “stoning,” in an irreverent way. The gallery label noted that Lopez grew up in a strict, fundamentalist household, and how he uses cannabis to moderate the trauma of his upbringing. It shares such linearity with the portraits of saints that kid might see in Catholic Church or school.
Indigenous Identities: Here, Now & Always
From the website:
Featuring 103 works made within the last fifty years by both well-established artists and recent MFA graduates, the exhibition crosses several generations and examines themes with historic and continuing relevance to Indigenous communities in the United States including stolen lands, genocide, lost languages and cultures, and invisibility. A celebration of Indigenous survivance, resistance, and community, the exhibition provides a provocative and visually stunning view of contemporary art.
The works on display varied from protest and expressions of rage to playful and reflective.
A Statement on Art and Resistance
Topographies of Dissent presents a selection of works by Armenian artists from the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union, revealing the paradoxes of Armenian history in the Soviet era through the art of its time. Divided into five sections—National Landscape: Land, Identity, Dream; Facets of “Formalism”; Abstraction; The 3rd Floor Group: Pop Art, Hyperrealism, and Neo-Dada; and Dystopias of the Evil Empire, the exhibition reflects the unprecedentedly liberal culture which blurred the boundaries of “official” and “unofficial” art.
I remarked to Aaron that I “hated” oil paintings when we were looking at some exhibits from the permanent collection; they hailed from the 1700s, and had that dark, gloopy look I usually walk right by. Some of the works in this collection, though, cured me of my aversion: they were tight, clean, punctuated by sharp lines and contrast.
New Brunswick
We didn’t linger terribly long at Zimmerli; there will be time for another visit for sure. I’m upset I missed the photography exhibit, An Eye for Photographs: Gifts from Anne and Arthur Goldstein.
We walked up towards the Barnes and Noble to look for a t-shirt, but were put off by the prices. I needed some coffee, and Rhonda some hydration, so we ended up at Efe’s for a drink.
We found this quirky shop selling all manner of vintage stuff. They had a cool game room with Marvel wallpaper.
The Two Cameras
I took my camera bag so I could shoot with both the OM Systems E-M10 Mark IV and my older Olympus E-PL5. I kept the Lumix 20mm f/1.7 on the E-M10, and the whacky TT Artisans 18mm f/6.3 lens on the E-PL5. Knowing the TT Artisans took interesting pictures when there’s plenty of light, I thought it might be fun to try to grab some indoor shots where there was a stark contrast between dark and light zones.
Here are two pics I took from inside Zimmerli, looking up from the ground floor to the skylight:
You can certainly see some differences, but I was impressed by how much detail the TT Artisans picked up, and how similar the images are.
The next two pics show renderings of stained glass, which compelled me to shoot them, as they were in a dark hallway only illuminated by ceiling lights, but because they were strongly backlit, I thought they would make a nice study in contrast between the two lenses.
Here’s the TT Artisans:
And the Panasonic:
The Lumix lens grabbed way more detail for sure, but the ultra-cheap TT Artisans did a great job rendering the image because of the light.
I was inspired partly by this shot I took the day before at Working Dog Winery, where I snuck this pic of a bottle of their unoaked chardonnay while we were sitting on the patio.
There’s nothing terribly compelling about this image, and Friday’s waning sun under the roof of the porch didn’t leave as much room for pics as I’d hoped with the TT Artisans. But I was gassed when I saw the contrast between the lighted side of the bottle and the shaded size that opposed it. It captures neatly the amount of light that the f/6.3 needs… but also some creative potential for future shoots.
Some of the other pics I posted above were taken with TT Artisans, most notably the Marvel wallpaper, the coffee shop sign, and Aaron atop the stairs.
