An Afternoon at the Museum

I like many others had the privilege of taking a visit to the newly remodeled and renovated art museum here on campus. Since I have been going to school here at Michigan the art musuem had been closed while undergoing its renovation so I really did not know what to expect when I walked in.

I was frankly astonished by the quality and amount of art that was assembled in this collection. Beautiful pieces of art in various forms of medians and from many different eras. As I explored further into the museum I took note of all of the great amount of diversity in the galleries, there seemed to be art from every part of the globe.

Being a student in Amcult 235 I was eager to view the various Middle Eastern art and see if they displayed art with orientalist influence or was counter-hegemonic. I looked in my map of the museum and saw that there was no "Middle Eastern" gallery to be found. I figured that they may have just lumped it in with one of the Asian galleries but after walking through them there was no Middle Eastern or Arab art to be found. I scoured the whole museum and all I was able to turn up was one plate from Iran tucked away in a corner of a hallway.
I found this lack of Middle Eastern art to be very dissapointing. Even after inquiring about the location of any Middle Eastern art by the staff of the museum even they confessed that they could not think of any pieces. I left the museum bittersweetly, I am very happy that we here in Ann Arbor can enjoy a firstrate art museum but at the sametime dissapointed that the majesty of Middle Eastern Art could not be enjoyed by the memebers of the community.