Amon Carter Museum

After many weeks of rain only occurring during our Wednesday afternoon class, it finally stopped – and so did going to the nature center. As much as we all enjoyed the nature center it just didn’t seem possible with the few classes we had left to make the trek back out there. So, our class decided that we would go to the Amon Carter Museum to see some of the landscape paintings. We were all excited to be able to blend the arts with our nature class, and we definitely found some amazing art pieces there.

It was slightly disappointing that they had part of the museum closed for renovations, so we couldn’t see all the art pieces they usually offer. However, I think that the pieces they still had available were beautiful and really spoke to the values of our nature class. I’m going to talk about one of my absolute favorite paintings there – it is called Thunder storm on Narragansett Bay. It is an oil painting by Martin Johnson Heade and the piece highlights the intensity of a storm swirling up on the coast of Rhode Island.

The piece stood out to me because of the darkness of the background and the contrast of the tiny white sailboats caught in the storm. Another really cool aspect of the piece is the faint yellow lightning strike that is in the center of the canvas. I loved how Johnson was able to capture such a dark atmosphere while at the same time keeping the seaside calm and steady. It was beautiful to me and transported me to the seaside as well.

When a painting can spark a thousand memories, you know it’s a piece you will remember. I was definitely excited about this museum in general because I had never been before and after seeing this piece, I would go back in a heartbeat. I could spend hours looking at paintings and loved that our class had the ability to go see some; especially because I think it really tied to our coursework. We spend lots of class time talking about scenes from works of poetry or discussing short pieces from nature writers and it was a great experience to be able to put a face to some of those discussions.

I really appreciate Dr. Williams coordinating all of the trips we have been able to take this semester – each one I like better than the last. This class truly has been like no other, and I believe that the honors college works extremely hard to get their students those real-life interactions and real-world adventures to experience outside of the classroom.