«The punk aesthetic of the 1970s, its underground survival throughout the 1980s, and its high-fashion revival in the 1990s have profoundly shaped what it means to be a rebellious youth. To be punk means to express one's disillusionment with the status quo and to challenge it.

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«When I walked into the Metropolitan Museum's PUNK: Chaos to Couture exhibition, I was not expecting big-name designers. Punk was supposedly a movement for nobody and nothing, wasn’t it? However, upon walking into the exhibition's catacomb of glorified dissension, replete with pieces from Galliano, Dolce and Gabbana, and Prada, I soon realized that the designer clothes on display are a testament to punk's power. I didn't used to associate names like Versace and Dior with crusty-shirted tribalism and deconstructionism, but punk has so changed the landscape for artistic expression that Givenchy and Johnny Rotten can now coexist happily in the same place.

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«Impressionist paintings are so beautiful, emotional, and colorful, yet in the nineteenth century, they were considered laughable; at the time, people favored meticulously realistic, "licked" paintings over the Impressionists' "broken brushstrokes." The term "licked" refers to paintings that shine like someone has licked them to even out any trace of brushstrokes, and "broken brushstrokes" refers to thick dabs of paint on a canvas.

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«Okay, now don't get me wrong. While I'm sort of presenting the following ideas as fact, I don't claim to know much about painting or anything about Impressionism, but I am completely fascinated with the movement—actually head over heels infatuated. I want more than anything to understand how it works, so please forgive the following inelegant suppositions as the workings of a mind tussling with understanding.

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«It's been a long day. You've been knocked around a couple of times. You sit down, and your eyes slowly begin to close. It's time to breathe a sigh of relief, take a break, and transport yourself to a different, more peaceful place. Two works by the Impressionist painter Claude Monet (1840–1926) allow you to do just that.

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«As the nineteenth century drew to a close, popular art experienced a number of changes, many of which were influenced by the rapidly changing culture and environment of the day. The prevalent, Salon-accepted style of painting in the 1870s and 80s valued the seamless blending of paint and focused on classical, historical themes. As society was redefined by the Industrial Revolution, a new art form began to take shape. Artists such as Édouard Manet (1832–1883) began to present works that were much less uniform in their surface texture and had visible brushstrokes. We now know these painters as the Impressionists.

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«Sweet, elegant, loving, beauty: these are the words that come to mind when I look at Springtime by Pierre-Auguste Cot. After hearing one of our amazing educators, Kathy Galitz, speak about it, though, I have a new feeling about what this and the other pieces in gallery 827 represent.

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«The Teen Advisory Group recently set out to learn about Impressionist art. Captained by Associate Museum Educator Kathy Galitz, we actually began our journey not with Impressionist art itself but with a brief exposé on what is lovingly referred to as "academic" art. Yes, academic.

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«Sometimes, in discrete moments of boredom-induced reflection, I begin to think about why certain things have survived from the past and others haven't. I wonder whether it is through sheer dumb luck that some artworks are preserved while others are lost, and whether the creators of the surviving works had any idea that their work would last for so long and be seen by so many eyes.

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