On the Menu for Week 2: Museums!

Week two for Queer Life and Activism FLEW by! Between Museum visits, morning class and free time in the city the students have been busy non stop. Now as we head into our final week the focus has turned to final projects and wrapping up this experience. 

Museums 

The week was packed with visits to some of Amsterdam’s most famous museums. We began the week at the Anne Frank house in the heart of the city. The museum is housed in the actual building where the Frank family hid for over two years during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. After working our way through the museum we spent some time reflecting and discussing our experience at the nearby Homomonument that we first visited on our first trip into the city. Tuesday brought a new museum, the MOCO! The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art is housed on the Museumplein, an expansive park lined with some of the city's most important museums. Students wove in and out of  rooms housing original works by Banksy, The Kid, and Yayoi Kusama noting which works spoke to them or moved them most. One interactive piece created by Studio Irma drove the discussion after our visit about the ‘bubbles’ we exist in that are shaped by our environment. Student’s reflected on how this trip has burst some of those bubbles and created new ones. Some students visited one of the famous house boats of Amsterdam and we learned about these floating houses dotting the canals. We rounded out the week looking at the famous sunflowers and portraits at the Van Gogh museum. The gift shop provided a plethora of Van Gogh themed “Miffy” dolls, delighting many of the students. Miffy is a fictional rabbit cartoon created by the Dutch artist Dick Bruna. The cute dolls have become a global phenomenon and many students have been collecting various versions as we travel through the country. 

Mornings typically consist of class with instructor Katie Poltz, while in the evenings students have the opportunity to explore the city on their own. Some have focused on trying a variety of the different cuisines here (Yemeni, Indonesian, Indian) while others have found treasures at the vintage stops scattered throughout the city. At this point in the trip they are all looking like locals as they board the trams and navigate around unassisted.