New York City is known throughout the world as one of the capital cities of the art world. Brooklyn is home to countless galleries and art museums, which showcase a diverse range of exhibits featuring art from all over the globe. Our Brooklyn workers’ compensation lawyers recently made a visit and checked out the latest exhibits. Here are some of our favorites:
Ahmed Mater: Mecca Journeys
On display between December 1st and April 8th, Ahmen Mater: Mecca Journeys is a photography exhibit that takes the viewer on a journey through Islam’s holiest city. The exhibit profiles the city’s changes under a massive urban redevelopment plan. Saudi artist Ahmed Mater has spent nearly a decade compiling the photographic timeline of Mecca.
The exhibit features large-scale photographs alongside videos and art installations. The photographs juxtapose the influx of massive wealth in the city with the lives of construction workers and migrant groups. Mecca Journeys offers a fascinating portrait of the complexities of one of the world’s most revered and mysterious cities.
A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt
A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt is one of two ancient Egyptian exhibitions currently on display at the Brooklyn Museum. This exhibit combines art and history by exploring the ancient Egyptian belief that in order for rebirth to be possible for a deceased woman, she had to briefly become a man. New research from feminist scholarship helped put this exhibition together.
The exhibition explores the differences between male and female access to the afterlife. Ancient Egyptians believed that the man created the fetus and transferred it to the woman during intercourse, which made rebirth impossible for a woman to achieve herself. When a woman died, she would be represented with red skin on her coffin (the color normally given to men), and a priest would recite spells that referred to the woman using masculine pronouns. These spells were also recorded on the coffin.
A Woman’s Afterlife features 27 objects from ancient Egyptian art, including the painted coffin box and mask of Weretwase and a carved statuette of a woman with a wig and close-fitting dress, indicated that she’d returned to her female form after transforming herself for rebirth.
Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt
The ancient Egyptians are known for mummifying their deceased animals, but little is known about their motivations. Soulful Creatures explores the religious reasons for making these mummies, how they were made, and why there were so many scattered across the ancient kingdom. One animal cemetery in Saqqara, Egypt alone contains over four million individual ibis mummies. In a nearby dog cemetery, there are over seven million mummies.
This exhibition features examples of a variety of mummified animals, including birds, cats, dogs, snakes, and others. The ancient Egyptians thought many animals were sacred and had connections to deities. They believed that mummified animals’ souls could communicate with gods.
This exhibit, along with A Woman’s Afterlife, is a must-see if you have any history buffs in your group during a trip to the Brooklyn Museum.
