To celebrate its reopening for the 2017 spring season, Brandeis’ Rose Art Museum invited the community to peruse its latest exhibits. The museums also provided delicious treats such as complimentary hot chocolate — apt for the harsh weather — and trendy food truck waffles. Both art and waffles proved to be aesthetically pleasing works. These brand new exhibits featured innovative, beautiful and chilling pieces. Opened on Feb. 17, they will publicly be on display until June 11.

Entering the large glass building with a clean, modern aesthetic reminiscent of the Museum of Modern Art conjured an instant sense of creative inspiration. The museum, which features about four or five new exhibits displayed on both the first and second floors, immediately allows the observer to get a taste of the type of contemporary art housed within. Right when one walks in, on the right and left are minimalistically and widely spread apart circular sculptures, seemingly made of shiny materials like marble or glass. This exhibit, titled “Black, White, Gray” and created by artist Fred Eversley, is only temporarily on view and is the first showcase visible on the second floor.

Toward the back of the second floor, past Eversley’s sculptures, is a smaller exhibit in the Lois Foster Wing. This exhibit, much different from the simple sculptures, is a small room with vintage-looking decor. Titled “The Undisciplined Collector” by Mark Dion, this permanent installation features vintage liquor cabinets, book-lined shelves, an old radio and more 60s memorabilia.

Throughout the hour, museum goers trickled in slowly. They included not only Brandeis students and photographers but also families with young children, older couples and people who seemed to be a part of the intellectual art community. They stood intently analyzing the pieces and discussing in their small groups.

Downstairs on the first floor is where the majority of the other exhibits are displayed. On all four walls hang polaroids picturing various subjects, from houses to people to indecipherable yet colorful images. This collection is called “King Solomon’s Mines,” by Tommy Hartung. It consisted of not only the photographs but also an intriguing video projected onto a white wall. Almost disturbing in an artistic way, the video showed distorted, heavily saturated images to a background narration that was distorted as well. Clips show ancient ruins throughout Saharan Africa’s desert. Also new to the Rose Art Museum, the virtual reality interactive, seemed to be one of the more popular exhibits. This project, which apparently took months of planning and creating, allows people to participate in the much-hyped virtual reality experience, with goggles and all. However, due to the long wait to try the experience, I was unfortunately unable to partake.

In the same room, past the virtual reality exhibit is another spooky projected video of a woman’s head with her eyes closed and a dark red substance pooling down the edges of her face from the top of her head: an on-view peice named “Sweating Blood” (1973) by artist Ana Mendieta.

What really stood out to me about this year’s collection was curators Kim Conaty and Caitlin Rubin’s choice to feature art not only from white artists but from people of color as well. For example, Ana Mendieta is a Cuban artist whose pieces reflect her passion for challenging “gender norms and the female body,” according to the wall’s printed description. And prominently displayed is Black artist Fred Eversley, icon of the 1970s bohemian art movement in Los Angeles. The choice to show art related to rich culture and history aside from white European was inspiring. The subject matter in “King Solomon’s Mines” supposedly aims to portray themes of “surveillance, wealth and politics” and the lives of the “impoverished migrants” of the Tibesti Mountains in Libya, according to the description. Perhaps my favorite exhibit, it shared jarring yet beautiful images of the people and landscapes.

The Rose Art Museum did not falter in its ability to impress with the many interesting pieces chosen this year. The exhibits span various different types of aesthetics and subject matters, making for an overall diverse experience. For a first-timer, I was unexpectedly impressed and moved by the art. A perusal through the museum is highly recommended.

—The Arts Editor, Hannah Kressel, volunteers as a guide at the Rose Art Museum, however was not involved in the editing process of this article.