Taking a day off of classes to visit New York City, artists from Kent School savored a fruitful visual art feast this Tuesday, Oct. 27. Visiting both the Met and MoMA, students involved in various art programs at Kent, including AP 2D Studio Art and Drawing, had a packed day exploring different exhibitions.

For Meimi Zhu ’16, a student from AP 2D Studio Art class, Rene Magritte’s “The False Mirror” was her favorite. Featuring a giant eye full of a blue sky with clouds, “this haunting piece of surrealist art reminded me of one theme in our AP photography class, frame in a frame, and I find that really intriguing,” said Meimi.

There were also other exhibitions that were particularly impressive to some students. For instance, the Picasso sculptures were the favorite of Pann Boonbaichaiyapruck ’16 “because some pieces are from private collections and you could never see those again.” Moreover, some original Monets and Salvador Dalis amazed Alex Wohlin ’16, who “highly recommends” the trip “to anybody on the fence about coming.”

A unique highlight of this art trip was an interdisciplinary assignment from Ms. Kelly of the English Department. Since she is reading Hamlet with her sixth form students currently, Ms. Kelly asked the seniors who were on this art trip to pay particular attention to some works pertaining to the book, such as “Hamlet and His Mother” by Eugene Delacroix and “The Actor Rouvière in the Role of Hamlet, Recoiling Before the Ghost” by Auguste Préault.

Ms. Kelly strongly believes “in the power and value of interdisciplinary work: whenever we look at a piece of literature or a work of art through the lens of another field of study, it helps us to learn more about all sides.” She asked her students to keep an eye out for those works because “the benefit of viewing an artist’s rendition of Hamlet lies in both understanding that the play exists beyond the pages that we read in class and seeing that it has inspired others to think and create for centuries.”

The trip offered students the chance to consider the role that art plays in all their academic endeavors and to return to school inspired to create their own masterpieces. For all the students, who began their day with medieval art and finished it with contemporary masterpieces, Mr. Scofield reflected, “It felt like we read a whole art history book.”