Teaching

Teaching Philosophy

To uncover and appreciate the power of art requires learning to look at art, to understand the conditions of its manufacture, and to think about who would see it and how they might react to it. Observing this process unfold across millennia shows us the remarkable similarities of civilizations as well as the critical innovations, appropriations, and rejections of prior practices. Read more in my Teaching Philosophy (opens pdf)

Teaching Tools

Videos

Art history classes typically require students to write a paper analyzing the formal qualities of a work of art. The process of formal analysis is highly visual, and the assignment prompt typically asks a range of questions designed to help the student look closely at the work and articulate what he or she finds there. New media strategies like videos can help students master a process, especially one as visual as the formal analysis. These two videos use Nicolas Poussin’s Sacrament of Ordination to help students approach two of the more difficult components of formal analysis: describing subject matter and analyzing  composition.

Visual Analysis: Subject Matter

Visual Analysis: Composition