moma response

This past Friday our class went to the museum of modern art to view the Private Lives Public Spaces exhibit, I was unable to go that day and instead went the next day. I can’t say that I personally enjoyed this exhibit, the majority of the videos struck me as mundane with only a few sticking in my memory. As negative as it may sound, the part of this particular exhibit that I enjoyed the most was the atmosphere created by the room itself. For most people when they picture an art museum they imagine clean white walls with a very organized display. However that’s not at all how I would describe this exhibit, the room was dark, the walls black if my memory serves me, and the screens seemed to be placed almost haphazardly.  This is obviously not the purpose of the exhibit though, which seems to serve as a window into the personal and unabashed lives of various people and families acting in ways they may not if they knew the videos would one day be out for the public to see.

The first standout video that I remember from my time in the exhibit was of a white family and their infant child. The reason that this video stood out from the rest was due to the negative feelings that it elicited from me. At one point in the video the mother undresses her baby revealing their naked body to the camera, this alone would have been enough for me to strongly dislike it, but it went further. After this event in the video, we saw the father “playing” with the infant, by tossing them around and at that point I had to walk away from the screen because what may have been in good fun to them, disgusted me. On topic, however, we can see from the video that the family is of a white background and presumedly of middle to upper-middle class. In retrospect to the article, we can place the identity of this family as heterosexual, white, and middle to upper-middle-class but as stated in the article “many whites do not have a racial identity and that white identity development may not fit a developmental stage model.” (376)

The second video that I can recall, admittedly as a blurred memory, was of what I believe to have been a white lesbian couple. In the video, I recall them in what I can only assume was their home or apartment just hanging about in the nude. “Openness about one’s sexuality has come in both professional literatures and subcultural communities to be seen as evidence of a healthy gay identity”(377) is mentioned in the section of the article regarding sexual identity and I believe that this video serves as a great example. My memory of what the rooms looked like is blurred at this point, but I would have assumed the couple to be in the middle-class adding onto the already apparent identity traits of being a homosexual couple. Another aspect of this home video that I seem to recall was the expressions on their faces, they felt empty (or at least that’s how I am remembering them). While that does not necessarily play a role in their identity the article by Judith Howard brings up the point of disparagement against homosexuals by many in society at the time, a fact that would only have been worse at the time the video was recorded.

While I personally found the upper floors of the museum of modern art more interesting to me that this collection of home movies I can also respect and understand the significance of what was being shown. Many people take for granted daily their own personal identity, while others are pushed down for the same concept. The Private Live Public Spaces exhibit allowed the general public a look into the videos that were meant to be viewed behind closed doors. In that sense, these videos give the viewer the best look into the individual identities of the subjects of each one. The knowledge to be gained from this insight, regardless of when these videos were taken, is massive because it shows us the human nature of people when they think no one is looking instead of the public-facing view most of us get of people on a daily basis.