In yesterday’s class, we talked about the Middle Ages and how even the name of that time period suggests that it was a period of buffer between two greater (more noteworthy) periods—Antiquity and the Renaissance. We talked about the negative connotations of the Middle Ages versus the positive connotations of the Renaissance. As part of this discussion, I learned that the art of the Middle Ages is referred to as Gothic art because it was art that came out of the fall of the Roman empire (at the hands of tribes from the north—one of which was called the Goths). We considered our own perception of gothic art (dark, medieval) and began to understand that our initial feelings about that style of art likely come from the negativity that the prevailing group in the Italian peninsula assigned to the style of art. This also explains part of the reason why Renaissance art was greeted with such exuberance—it looked more like the art from antiquity and in no way resembled the Gothic art that had taken over the peninsula. When I returned to the museum, I found myself asking a lot of questions about the use of color in Thompson’s work. I wonder why he keeps the colors that we see in nature true for the landscape portion of his work, but then chooses to make the human figures all sorts of vibrant colors with very little detail on the body. I am also curious to understand why he sometimes gives his human figures natural skin colors and why other times he does not (particularly as much of his work is a commentary on the African American experience).