Pixar and Mummies?

Hello Everyone!

      Today's post is about my after school "mini viaje" for my class, Spanish Mediterranean Art (Med Art). For our "mini viaje" we went to an exposition center down the road from school that had 2 exhibits showing, Pixar and Mummies.

      In Med Art we have been learning about the different styles of arte antiguo or arte de la prehistoria(ancient/prehistoric art). So far in class we have learned about 3 different style of art: Arte Egipcio, Arte Griego, and Arte Romano (egyptian, greek, and roman). It's just our luck that there happened to be a Momia (mummy) exhibit, and to make our luck even better the Pixar exhibit was there at the same time.

     After school this week we walked to the exhibition hall and gathered with the Contemporary Arts class too to view the exhibits. We started off with the mummy exhibit which included tablets, miniature sculptures, busts, larger sculptures, jewelry, parchments, and of course mummies. Now when I say mummies I don't mean the kind where you can see their skin shriveled up, but the kind where they are wrapped up like a human cocoon. We had a guide to help us further understand the exhibit beyond what the small descriptions said next to each item. He helped explain the process of how to get the brain out of a dead body (don't worry I definitely won't go into detail about that) and how they kept certain vital organs in jars. The most interesting part about the mummy exhibit, to me at least, was the mummified cats. I had no idea that ancient Egyptians had even attempted mummification on anything else besides a human.

     After seeing the mummy exhibit we finally got to go to the Pixar exhibit (saved the best for last!). The exhibit was amazing! I'm a really big Pixar fan, so it definitely caught my interest. Inside there were videos about the animations, the timeline of Pixar, sketches of the characters and their movements/facial expressions. They also had mini clay like sculptures of the characters from Finding Nemo, Up, Wall-e, Monsters Inc., Bugs life, Cars, and Toy Story. My favorite part about this exhibit was it also showed the many different drawings they had for each character; for instance, the character Boo in Monsters Inc. went through at least 4 different sketches before they got the final draft. There was also a really interesting part of the exhibit where there was a spinning wheel of statues of Toy Story characters in different positions. At first it just looks like a bunch of spinning statues, but then the lights go off and a strobe light starts making the statues come to life, dancing and jumping around on the wheel.

       If anyone who is reading this is coming to Zaragoza anytime soon I definitely recommend this exhibit. I'm probably going to take my family to go see the Pixar exhibit in the winter when they visit me because the exhibit is here until beginning January.

              I tried to take photos during this trip to use on my blog, but the security guard asked me to delete them :(.

             Besos!
                 Lauren Archer