Merengue is the Dominican national dance. There are a number of step variations, but it is characterized by short movements of the feet.The style is believed to have evolved from one of two historical sources. One theory is that the steps were first “danced” by slaves when they marched through plantation, their feet chained together, to a drumbeat. Another theory says that when a war general returned home with a limp, the welcoming peasants imitated his step in their dancing.

Bachata is a form of music that was rather new, becoming a distinct genre only in the 1960. It varies from the guitar music of Latin American and the Caribbean, which was played to the beat of maracas, clavas, bongo drums, or guitars. Bachata is unique in the Dominican Republic as romance music, but in Washington Heights it can alter with modern quickening beats and turned into dance music.

The best known one is The Cloisters which is a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that is devoted to medieval art. The museum building is a work of art itself located in Fort Tryon Park and is similar to monasteries in southern France.  The collection shows many sculptures, manuscripts, stained glass, metalwork, enamels, ivories, and tapestries from the time. Much of the sculptures in the museum were from the collection of Grey Barnard (1863–1938) who was a prominent American sculptor and a collector of medieval art.  He opened up a building on Fort Washington Avenue to show the work, but after a generous donation by John D. Rockefeller Jr. the collection was moved to the Cloisters in 1925.

Morris-Jumel Mansion is also located in Washington Heights on 160th street. It was originally built as a summer home for Colonel Roger Morris, and his wife Mary Philipse. During the Revolutionary War in 1776, the house was taken over and used as the headquarters for George Washington who at that time was a general.

The Hispanic Society of America, which is located in 155st., was founded by Archer Milton Huntington in 1904. He had donated his own collection of Hispanic paintings, books, manuscripts, maps, and photographs to the museum. The Society has been able to collect works from Spain, Portugal, and Latin America with more than eight hundred paintings, six thousand watercolors and drawings, and almost a thousand sculptures.

Like it was said on the video. Washington Heights is a place where Dominicans and other Hispanics can feel at home. When walking through the streets at night it’s not dangerous because everyone is still outside either enjoying a game of cards or Dominos, or just meeting up with people and walk around.

Many immigrants go to live in Washington Heights not only because of the culture that is settled there, but also because of the low rent. Artists, students, and families from diverse backgrounds live here. Many of the buildings were built in the once prevalent Art Deco style, thereby creating a certain stylistic uniformity, which harmonizes the area. Washington Heights has many beautiful houses and co-ops on quiet tree-lined blocks with lovely architecture.

During the 1890′s Armenian immigrants started to arrive in Washington Heights. They were escaping political persecution back home.

During the 1900s, Irish immigrants begin arriving at the same time as Germans, German Jews and English Protestants.

In the 1940s a major wave of Puerto Rican immigration to New York brings sizable numbers to Washington Heights, some of whom had simply moved north from East Harlem. At that same time African Americans also started moving in as housing in Harlem becomes tight.

During the mid 1960′s, Dominican immigration to the United States, spurred first by political instability in the Dominican Republic and then economic necessity, brings most newcomers to Washington Heights. In the Late 1960′s white residents of all ethnicities start moving out in large numbers. So it then became a basic Hispanic neighborhood.

Washington Heights is a small neighborhood that was named for Fort Washington. Fort Washington was a fertification constructed at the highest point on Manhattan island by Continental Army troops during the American Revolutionary War in 1776 to defend the area from the British forces.

In the 1880s, small farms are bought up by wealthy white Protestant families and combined into large estates and it was named Harlem Heights. By the 1870s, the neighborhood starts to be generally known as Washington Heights.

This poster of a toucan presenting a drink was used to demonstrate a famous example of an alcohol advertisement. Guinness is a popular dry stout alcoholic drink that originated in Aurthur Guinness’ brewery in Dublin. There are different versions of this poster saying “What a great way to show off your Guinness” so most probably the Toucan’s beak is used to center your eyes to the alcoholic drink. All of the Guinness advertisements present the toucan stealing the beverage from men.

Even though the beak of the toucan leads your eyes to the alcohol, the bird is the one that stands out the most. If someone was to just glance at the poster one would’ve never known it was an advertisement for an alcoholic drink. But overall, there’s nothing else that could attract the attention of the viewer which is the whole point since the beer is what should be the most noticeable.

Kara Walker

Kara Walker, born in California, is an artist that works with silhouette figures. Her work explores the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. She presents her work on walls to show a theatrical aspect of it and adds colored light with overhead projectors to cast the viewers shadow onto the wall so it could mingle around with Walker’s figures as if they themselves were experiencing the story. Most of her art work shows the figurines inflicting some kind of violence on one another like being burned or sliced into pieces.

Walker’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Rococo Art

One image or era, that I thought was pretty interesting was the Rococo era. This is one of the pictures from the Love Letters. These were painted during the Enlightenment and at this time pictures likes these were condemned. They demanded a new style of art that would show an example of moral behavior, of human beings at their most noble.

The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli (1781) portrays a woman who had a dream about a mare. A mare is the correct name for deamons which were thought to sit in the chest of sleepers (this is supposevely why sometimes we can’t breathe when we wake up from a nightmare). The dream was about the deamon coming on a black horse to rape the sleeping woman and make her conceive his child. Hence comes the mare part in nightmare.