In “No Art Historian Is an Island” presented by Amy Von Lintel of West Texas A&M University, the hybrid nature of art history as a discipline was elegantly juxtaposed to what the author referred to as the “realities of the many headed hydra”, referring to the diversity of responsibilities one takes on as an art historian in a small department. One particularly prescient strategy presented by Von Lintel was to create a more interdisciplinary experience for her students through collaborative teaching. By inviting carefully selected guest lecturers from other departments at her university to her classes, Von Lintel not only vastly expands the knowledge base of her classroom, she employs a pedagogical strategy which reinforces the value of deep learning and fosterers greater student focus. Furthermore, her collaboration with the other faculty at her college undoubtedly serves as a model for successful collaboration and specialization for her students, stressing the nature of scholarship as a shared enterprise.

The third and final paper was presented by Gregory Gilbert of Knox College and titled “The Solitary Art Historian in a Liberal Arts College: Strategies for Aligning Faculty and Student Research”. After some years of struggling to find time for his scholarly duties beyond the classroom, Gilbert decided to more explicitly integrate his ongoing scholarly work into his courses. Rather than employing the common strategy of teaching his dissertation, Gilbert instead began to use his courses to both share and expand his research area through the vehicle of his coursework with students. He was able to do this by proposing seminar themes, term paper topics, and student research areas more closely related to his area of focus. In doing so Gilbert found that he was able to more effectively guide students at all areas of research and course projects.

Having some background in medical academic publishing, I was reminded of the ubiquitous strategy of collaborative research and publication in the medical fields, where research duties are divided according to rank and/or specialty and credit is shared among several authors. Faculty at teaching hospitals or universities publish collaborative work with their advanced students, providing clear benefits for both parties. Simultaneously hearing Gilbert’s strategies and recalling my experience left me wondering why art historical publication typically continues to be such a solitary enterprise.

The theme that clearly united all of these papers was collaboration. The panel emphasized how art history faculty can improve their efficacy through collaboration with one another and faculty from other departments. Most importantly this panel stressed how working with students can be viewed as collaboration, albeit heavily guided by the instructor. By viewing teaching as essentially collaborative, faculty can foster a greater sense of ownership and responsibility over art history and create more learner-centered environments where students can more effectively integrate art history into their own sense of self.

The sessions I’ve visited thus far have been largely interesting, with some presenters generating more enthusiasm than others. “Deconstructing Costume Histories: Rereading Identities in Fashion Collections and Exhibitions” was highly informative, offering new research from several experts from academia and museums. “Who Do We Teach: Challenges and Strategies in Recognizing Our Students, and Developing and Supporting Curriculum for Multiple Constituencies” offered some interesting perspective on pedagogy, but seemed to not line up well with the expectations produced by the title. Focus was placed not on who students are, but on how certain professors deal with their own expectations of students. Several interesting and relevant questions were produced by audience members regarding how instructors and professors might apply the theories presented to their own practice. The responses seemed highly personal and largely unsatisfying for the audience, suggesting the session successfully identified an area of need, but failed to adequately address that need.

“The Other Histories of Photography: The First One Hundred Years” was comprised of five papers exploring the margins of the field, often with surprising results. In particular Melody D. Davis’ exploration of the positions and operations of stereography in 19^th century culture, and 20^th century historiography, was both enlightening and instructive. Davis’ enthusiasm and expertise effectively brought her subject to life, illustrating it’s history and relevance.  “Technology in the Art History Classroom: A Hands-On Learning Workshop” was an informative workshop offering participant the opportunity to learn briefly about four web-based pedagogical tools, followed by a more in-depth exploration of one particular tool of the participant’s choice. I appreciated the practical applications and solutions offered which helped to concretize and contextualize much of the more theoretical content of the conference.

On that theoretical note, “The Theoretical Turn”, a special session honoring the work of Rosalind Krauss, sought to elucidate Krauss’ influence on other scholars and professionals in art history. Presenters spoke about the effects that Krauss’ work has on them both personally and professionally. Yve-Alain Bois’ introduction neatly summarized the effects of Krauss’ work on his own career, and subsequent speakers elucidated their particular relationships with her work. After hearing these stories, the vast network of Krauss’ influence began to crystallize more clearly, and I appreciated hearing how various scholars have uniquely incorporated her work into their own practice.

On a practical note, the Los Angeles Convention Center could be much more visitor friendly. The lack of food options is surprising, and the existing options are reminiscent of the food one typically finds at a zoo. A few of the temporary walls dividing larger rooms have been found to be insufficient at isolating noise from neighboring sessions. Most of the sessions I visited were not more that half full, implying that smaller rooms would have been more practical and might have fostered greater discussion and debate. Of course, this may be a reflection of my own interests and choices of sessions.

1. The State of the Discipline

Chairs: Sandra Esslinger, Mount San Antonio College; Deana Hight, Mount San Antonio College

While many of us may feel we already have answers to questions this session is likely to pose, it seems important for anyone who wishes to imagine their future in Art History.

2. What Is Conceptual Thinking?

Chair: Steven Bleicher, Coastal Carolina University

Like conceptual art, conceptual thinking is an area that I find to be challenging for my students. I look forward to being in their shoes for a couple of hours.

3. Who Do We Teach? Challenges and Strategies in Recognizing Our Students, and Developing and Supporting Curriculum for Multiple Constituencies

Chairs: Joan Giroux, Columbia College Chicago; Cindy Maguire, Adelphi University

Speaking of being in their shoes, shouldn’t we strive to better understand our students? We spend so much energy helping them understand who we are and what we do, and I for one am often surprised by them.

4. Flying Solo: The Opportunities and Challenges Presented to the Solitary Art Historian in a Small College

Chairs: Laura J. Crary, Presbyterian College; William Ganis, Wells College

Though on it’s surface this session has a narrow focus, I suspect that many of the questions presented will be relevant to even those art historians in larger departments. I, for instance, fly tandem. Nonetheless I am looking forward to learning about how other historians have embraced the challenges of interdisciplinary pedagogy and small departments.

5. Technology in the Art History Classroom: A Hands-On Learning Workshop

Chair: Sarah Jarmer Scott, Wagner College

I’m always looking for new opportunities to engage my students. Many of the technological and pedagogical advancements I’ve experienced have made a positive impact on my classroom, and many of them have been more distracting than productive

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art May 21-September 6

Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories

Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco May 12-September 6

Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris

De Young Museum, San Francisco June 11 – October 9

What is an art exhibition for? Two opposing answers to this question are presented concurrently at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the De Young Museum. At both exhibitions viewers will find many impressive and historically important works by canonical artists. At SFMoMA, viewers will find these works organized into a narrative structure that adds layers of meaning to the works and help viewers see them as more than isolated objects.

Having attended the curator panel discussion accompanying the opening of The Steins Collect, I was well prepared to appreciate the exhibition’s curatorial mission. Works purchased by primarily Gertrude and Leo Stein are organized according to the addresses where the collectors lived at the time. Not only does this form an essentially chronological view of the development of Picasso and Matisse’s paintings between the first decade of the 20^th century and World War II, it also helps the viewer see the pictures in roughly the same groupings in which they were displayed at the Stein residences. Large reproductions of period photographs are impressive not only for the amount of information that they contain, but also for the additional context that they provide. Some of the actual furniture pieces displayed in the photographs have been lent for the exhibition, helping to bridge the contemporary world of the modern art museum and the past represented in the photographs. If any part of the exhibition seems out of place, it is the room dedicated to the home built by Le Corbusier for Michael and Sarah Stein in 1926, Villa Stein-De Monzie. Films, photographs, and original drawings for the project are on display. The drawings by Le Corbusier display a delicate balance of meticulous draftsmanship and artful design, making them worthy of viewing for their own sake. That the viewer is presented with representations of the commissioned work strikes a contrast with the many canvases on display, notwithstanding the awkward notion of the commissioned house as part of the art collection. Nonetheless, by the end of The Steins Collect, viewers will not only have seen dozens of major works by icons of Modern Art, but will also have gained substantial insights into the lives and motivations of this highly influential family of collectors.

More of these insights are available one block away at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, where Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories is on display. Less about her art collection and more about her relationships, the photographs are the stars of this show. The title of the exhibition is apt, as much of the viewer’s experience involves looking at images of Gertrude and her companions. These images are informative and entertaining, and create a strong sense of the attitudes, beliefs, and interactions of Stein and her circle. As is typically the case at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, the exhibition layout, wall texts, and overall exhibition design each help to achieve the goals of the exhibition. Though Seeing Gertrude Stein may lack the artistic firepower of The Steins Collect, the exhibition is nonetheless a rewarding experience for viewers with an interest in Stein herself or the period in general.

While the exhibitions at SFMoMA and the Contemporary Jewish Museum are decidedly educational experiences, Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris at the De Young Museum feels like a gallery show by comparison. Over one hundred chronologically arranged works by Picasso are on loan from the Musée National Picasso, Paris, which favors the second half of the artist’s long career. After an initial wall panel introducing the artist and describing the genesis of the museum from which the works come, the only supporting texts are short quotes from the artist placed high on the walls that do little to explain the artist’s motivations, inspirations, goals, or methods. Though I did not utilize the audio guide for this exhibition, other viewers have described the commentary as adding little to their understanding of the artworks. Despite the exhibition’s lack of educational or curatorial mission, it provides Bay Area viewers with the opportunity to see works by Picasso that normally require a trip to Paris. Furthermore, though it may seem hastily constructed compared to the show at SFMoMA, any viewer with an interest in Picasso will find reasons to appreciate the De Young show. Some viewers may even appreciate the lack of a strong curatorial mission, which they may see as heavy-handed or intrusive. This viewer, however, believes that art exhibitions are at their best when they present and support a compelling thesis that serves not only to entertain the viewing audience, but to educate us as well.

“For artists, whose calling required careful observation of the world around them, this heightened appreciation of the spectator elevated their own status and offered new opportunities. Bruegel the Elder’s Ice Skating before the Gate of St. George of 1558 is the first clear example of a scene from daily life serving as the sole subject of a work of art…

…Bruegel’s Ice Skating before the Gate of St. George and Seven Virtues mark a critical point in the development called “genre” subjects. They established an important precedent by demonstrating that art could be created from the minutiae of daily life and still display the artist’s skill and imagination. It could be based on observations of of the world around the artist and still satisfy the expectations of a demanding viewer. An art of the ordinary could amuse and entertain and, at the same time, it could be used to address more serious questions…”

Sullivan’s article explains the origins of this new mode of spectatorship in classical thought, explores its connections to life in mid-16th century Antwerp, and offers a model for resituating the origins of what is known as the Northern Renaissance. As the term itself suggests, the Northern Renaissance has traditionally been constructed for the non-specialist audience as the introduction of 15-16th century Italian motifs and figure types, and Classical architecture, into artworks produced in Northern Europe. Critical observers immediately question this construct as overly simplistic, as many of my students have when they encountered it in their texts. As an art historian whose specialty lies elsewhere, I admit that I have struggled to offer those students a satisfactory response. Sullivan’s article should serve as an reference point for addressing this gap in the survey, and be of great interest to specialists and nonspecialists alike.

Inevitable changes to the relative accessibility of information on the web, including differing standards for fixed-line versus mobile access, seem to be on the horizon. How will this alter the way students (and others) find art images online, including what they find, how easy it is to find what they are looking for, and the role of serendipitous discovery? Would those who stumbled upon the Getty’s images while searching for something else have found them at all if the forthcoming regulations had long been in place? How will museums and other art institutions continue to vie for web visibility?

“Original works of art have been forgotten. They’re being used as data, without any sense of whether they’re good, bad or indifferent.”

He added: “No one wants to turn art history back 150 years. But we’re lacking an important tool that we threw out the window 70 years ago.”

In my graduate program (graduated in 2007), post-1950s theories of methodology were emphasized, even while we were encouraged to maintain an object-centered approach. Our initial assignment in my first graduate seminar was to perform a roughly ten-page formal analysis from a work of art actually viewed (not from reproductions).  As mundane as that may sound, I believe we all learned much from performing the analysis and hearing others do so.

I’m curious to hear from those with recent graduate school experience regarding the approach in their programs concerning the relationships between theory and object / post-disciplinary approaches and traditional methods such as iconography and conoisseurship.

This is a topic I’ve thought some about, while teaching. I admire Hayles’s willingness to sidestep the bias among academics against “ADD generation” habits and examine it afresh. Too many academics seek only to create students in their own image, a point that Ken Robinson made eloquently in a 2006 talk:

If you were to visit education, as an alien, and say “What’s it for, public education?” I think you’d have to conclude — if you look at the output, who really succeeds by this, who does everything that they should, who gets all the brownie points, who are the winners — I think you’d have to conclude the whole purpose of public education throughout the world is to produce university professors. Isn’t it? They’re the people who come out the top. And I used to be one, so there. (Laughter) And I like university professors, but you know, we shouldn’t hold them up as the high-water mark of all human achievement … If you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn’t valued, or was actually stigmatized.

Now, here is what Hayles has to say about “deep attention” and “hyper attention”:

Deep attention, the cognitive style traditionally associated with the humanities, is characterized by concentrating on a single object for long periods (say, a novel by Dickens), ignoring outside stimuli while so engaged, preferring a single information stream, and having a high tolerance for long focus times. Hyper attention, by contrast, is characterized by switching focus rapidly between different tasks, preferring multiple information streams, seeking a high level of stimulation, and having a low tolerance for boredom … Each cognitive mode has advantages and limitations. Deep attention is superb for solving complex problems represented in a single medium, but it comes at the price of environmental alertness and flexibility of response. Hyper attention excels at negotiating rapidly changing environments in which multiple foci compete for attention; its disadvantage is impatience with focusing for long periods on a non-interactive object such as a Victorian novel or complicated math problem.

Hayles goes on to argue that, like it or not, college students are increasingly drawn to hyper attention. What are the consequences of this for teaching?

… educators face a choice: change the students to fit the educational environment, or change the environment to fit the students … How can the considerable benefits of deep attention be cultivated in a generation of students who prefer high levels of stimulation and have low thresholds for boredom? … [In an] interactive classroom at the University of Southern California … Fourteen large screens span the walls, providing display space for input controlled by wireless laptop computers scattered around a large conference table. One mode of interaction is “Google jockeying”; while a speaker is making a presentation, participants search the Web for appropriate content to display on the screens, for example web sites with examples, definitions, images, or opposing views. Another mode of interaction is “backchanneling,” in which participants type in comments as the speaker talks, providing running commentary on the material being presented … [Or] Imagine a course that begins by studying strategies of self-presentation at the wildly popular Facebook.com, including naiveté, deception, ironic juxtaposition, competition, cooperation, betrayal, and compelling narrative. This provides a rich context in which the sly and subversive self-presentations in The Education of Henry Adams can be analyzed, including an assignment that asks students to compose Facebook entries for the book’s ironic persona.

Hayles writes that these experiments have so far produced mixed results, but I found them inspiring nonetheless. After all, trying to respond creatively to the new wave of students seems much more interesting than simply trying to bludgeon them with the old, decreasingly effective methods, at ever higher volumes, which, I’ll admit, has been my instinct in the past.

My career has been in museums, at the Louvre mostly, where I’ve spent almost 40 years. I love museums, all museums. Alas I didn’t discover them in school, but rather from my parents … Many don’t get that opportunity, that privilege … [Our educational] system, I say with regret, is antidemocratic, profoundly unjust, profoundly antiegalitarian, and perfectly elitist in the worst sense of the term.

Isn’t it to remedy this grave injustice that art historians have long fought for art history to be a required course in high school and college? … School teaches us to read and to write, but it doesn’t teach us to see … Art history is nothing other than learning to see. Art is not transparent …

Art history has had its great figures, from Aby Warburg to Erwin Panofsky, from Bernard Berenson to Roberto Longhi, from Anthony Blunt to John Pope-Hennessy, from Robert Rosenblum to Michael Baxandall, not to mention our compatriots who made 19th-century France one of the two great countries for art history alongside Germany and our more recent Henri Focillon, Émile Mâle, Élie Faure, Louis Grodecki, Antoine Schnapper, Daniel Arasse. My list is not exhaustive …

[Yet it is] a misunderstood discipline. The sentence that has enraged art historians, here it is. You can read it in the 2008 Bulletin Officiel of the national education ministry: “A teacher of French literature [can also] teach the arts … To do so, he has no need for specialized education.”

“He has no need for specialized education.” The jaw drops.