1 February 2008 | Books, Teaching
Artist and writer Morgan Meis reviews the new Phaidon megasurvey 30,000 Years of Art: The story of human creativity across time and space: … [I] imagine a group of art historians sitting around a table with a sixth or seventh bottle of wine giggling to each other like schoolgirls. “Take that, art theorists! We give [...]
9 January 2008 | Teaching
From Libération: “In school, children learn to read but not to see.” In these pages, the day after the presidential election, the painting historian Pierre Rosenberg, former Louvre president, reminded candidate Sarkozy of his promise to introduce art history into the schools. If a report Libération obtained a copy of is to be believed, “starting [...]
12 December 2007 | Teaching
According to this article in Spiegel Online, German students are enrolling in art-history programs in record numbers, spurred on in part by the booming art market. However, students aren’t always finding the jobs of their dreams waiting for them on the other side — some settle for a part-time gig or even an unpaid internship.
6 November 2007 | Books, Modern, Teaching
In CAA Reviews, Juliet Bellow has published an essay, “Surveying the ‘Long Nineteenth Century’: A Review of Art-History Textbooks in the Field,” that evaluates the following texts: 19th-Century Art by Robert Rosenblum and H.W. Janson (2005); 19th Century European Painting: David to Cézanne by Lorenz Eitner (2002); Nineteenth Century Art: A Critical History by Stephen [...]
25 October 2007 | Teaching
In a recent issue (15:1) of Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, Camille Paglia writes: For the fine arts to revive, they must recover their spiritual center. Profaning the iconography of other people’s faiths is boring and adolescent. The New Age movement, to which I belong, was a distillation of the 1960s’ multicultural [...]
14 September 2007 | Teaching
How not to win over your students: “The class laughed when my UC Irvine Art History professor said she wrote a letter to Comedy Central explaining that she would boycott the station unless they stopped playing ‘Girls Gone Wild’ commercials.”
13 September 2007 | Teaching
For art history professors returning to the classroom this fall, the signs are good. In a quick survey of student blogs, we noted the following recent comments: “My art history professor is absolutely amazing. I feel so good about this being my major, especially if I can have more classes with him later on. I’m [...]
In the January 2007 Journal of Scholarly Publishing, Jeffrey Weidman reviews the recently released 7th edition of Janson, titled Janson’s History of Art: The Western Tradition, placing it within the context of “the lineage of English-language art history surveys in America.” The editor of the new edition, Sarah Touborg, abandoned “the stylistic/formalist approach, which had [...]
13 February 2007 | Teaching
Sweet Briar College professor Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe has begun creating art history podcasts full of special effects that he calls “Art History in Just a Minute” (that are not necessarily under a minute long). According to his college’s newsletter, “Since its launch in December 2006, ‘The Last Supper’ has been downloaded more than [...]
11 August 2006 | Teaching
From Artnet: “Is art getting smarter? Seems so! Last year, the School of Visual Arts in New York began offering an MFA in ‘art criticism and writing,’ a program chaired by art historian and critic Thomas McEvilley. Now, SVA is launching a second new degree program, this one aimed at undergraduates — a BFA in [...]
26 June 2006 | Books, Teaching
John Paoletti’s February CAA talk on textbooks is now available online: “I would like to propose a moratorium on all publication of general textbooks in the history of art … we don’t seem to be willing to let the textbooks catch up with our innovations in teaching. Classrooms without a textbook would demand both a [...]
23 May 2006 | Teaching
How does art historian Wanda Corn win teaching awards? With experiential teaching: “For her course Transatlantic Modernism: Paris and New York in the Early 20th Century, Corn pulls out all the stops. She dresses like Gertrude Stein and invites her students and their guests to come in costume for an evening ‘Chez Stein,’ with a [...]
8 May 2006 | Teaching
Blogger Seven Bellfifth writes: “Ok, Art History. Whatever. It’s what I’m taking a mental break from studying now. My question is: Who the hell cares? Don’t get me wrong–I like art a lot, and I like knowing about art. I just hate being made to memorize bunches of images and their titles and artists and [...]
20 April 2006 | Asia, Books, Teaching
Leeds University lecturer Ashley Thompson reviews Helen Ibbitson Jessup’s Art & Architecture of Cambodia in the April issue of Orientations: “a thorough and nuanced presentation … an invaluable contribution to the field of Khmer studies in particular, as well as to the broader study of Asian art … the first of its kind in the [...]
13 April 2006 | Teaching
Blogger and retired professor Wayne Dynes writes: “To my students I would continue to administer a bitter pill: learn German. German thought continues to be important in many fields. These include art history. Wolfgang Sauerländer is the world’s leading medievalist, and many of his works have not been translated. Two other major figures are Hans [...]
6 April 2006 | Teaching
‘Googling “Things To Do Before You Die” — as I did recently — is to be overwhelmed by what seems to be a unifying human obsession. I found no less than 880 million web postings dedicated to the goals people want to check off before taking the final dirt nap … Some appeal to those [...]
29 March 2006 | Teaching
Don’t show Susan Sarandon videos: “I fell asleep in my art history class today. We were watching a video on the Mayans, narrated by Susan Sarandon … usually the videos are of horrendously poor quality, everything appears to have been filmed through a neon-yellow filter … not this time. This was watchable; but with the [...]
28 March 2006 | Teaching
Are you yet used to your students text-messaging during class? In the latest New York Magazine, one student reports, “There was not a lot that compared to the charge I would get when I’d feel my phone vibrate in my pocket during my medieval-art-history lecture and find a message like, just thinking about your fantastic [...]
23 March 2006 | Teaching
Another use for the art-history degree: it could help you become a German citizen. That is, assuming you still remember the answers to questions such as this one: “In one of his most famous paintings, the German painter Caspar David Friedrich depicted a landscape on the Baltic Sea island Rügen. Which motif does the picture [...]
21 March 2006 | Teaching
Want to win points with students who seem to love nothing so much as basketball? In the Albany Times-Union, a University of Albany sophomore reports that her “art history professor put a ‘Go Great Danes!’ slide in the middle of her Power Point presentation.”
