Non-Static Forms
This class offeres upper division undergrads a chance to explore non traditional media and time-based concepts in art. The approach is simultaneously theoretical and technical, combining hands-on exercises with reading. Projects are assigned in the following areas: Conceptual Art, Performance, and Environmental Installation.
In keeping with the twentieth century shift of focus from medium to idea as a working methodology, this course stresses thematic development. Students explore a conceptual basis for their artistic production to encourage development of a consistent body of work. Additional emphasis is placed on the necessity of and options for documentation.
Performance
Performance art is an aggregate term used to describe those works of art which, due to their interdisciplinary nature, their innovative structure, or their critical stance, are not able to situate themselves comfortably within the bounds of pre-existing artistic disciplines. While performance may include elements of theater, dance, music, the visual arts, or poetry, it transforms these traditional forms for some use we would not have otherwise assumed or expected. As a genre, performance resists formulas and defies categorization. Rather, it seeks integration and synthesis. Each new work confronts its thematic material and then draws freely from any media that will best serve its intention. As a result, performance works explore new ground and develop forms of art that might not otherwise exist.
This class approaches performance from a theoretical and practical standpoint simultaneously. While students are assigned a sequence of exercises designed to allow them to experience various genres of recent performance history, they are concurrently assigned readings which will expose them to pertinent critical and theoretical issues.
Artist Video
This course provides an introduction to (or continuing skills in) the production of artist video as a tool for art making. Students develop their technical skills through a series of hands-on assignments designed to emphasize the fine arts considerations of this medium. While the development of technical confidence with digital editing requires hours of effort, it is not the purpose of this course. Rather, the course seeks to foster the development of conceptual and creative tools necessary for the production of video art.
At the same time, critical analysis is encouraged in viewing the works of other students and in responding to the videos of established artists in the field. In addition, assigned readings acquaint students with the history of video art and with its theoretical issues.
Installations and Environments
This class offeres upper division undergrads a chance to explore non traditional media and time-based concepts in art. The approach is simultaneously theoretical and technical, combining hands-on exercises with reading. Projects are assigned in the following areas: Conceptual Art, Performance, and Environmental Installation.
In keeping with the twentieth century shift of focus from medium to idea as a working methodology, this course stresses thematic development. Students explore a conceptual basis for their artistic production to encourage development of a consistent body of work. Additional emphasis is placed on the necessity of and options for documentation.
Artists as Curators
Successful curation involves insight, persistence, and judgment. For a show to realize its curatorial intentions, judicious selection, meticulous research, public and often private persuasion, as well as dynamic installation strategies all come into play. The class considers these pragmatic aspects of curating alongside an array of theoretical issues.
More and more artists have multiple identities as critics, curators, and makers. Artists curate their own work for solo exhibitions and they curate their friends' work for group shows. Artists may curate shows of their peers as a way of building a creative community, thereby providing logical contexts for their work. Artists serve in curatorial roles in biennials and festivals. Artists are sometimes invited to play with collections (e.g. Fred Wilson and Sophie Calle). And artists use curation as an artmaking strategy, building works from collections of objects. Increasingly, there are practices of virtual curation, where art works are assembled conceptually as lectures or electronic galleries.
This is a course for anyone interested in curating as a creative practice. This is a studio class with curatorial projects as art-making assignments, but there is also substantial reading exploring a range of perspectives within contemporary curatorial activity. The course is useful to students of theory and history who are considering curatorial careers, but it has a special focus on artists as curators.
Art for Social Change
Coming Soon
Relational Performance
In the words of Grant Kester, relational artists "define themselves as artists through their ability to catalyze understanding, to mediate exchange, and to sustain an ongoing process of empathetic identification and critical analysis."
We are now experiencing what has been called “the social turn” in contemporary art and theatre. While all performance is in some sense about relations among performers and viewers, what we could call “Relational Performance” explicitly constructs social interaction as the very medium--and often the subject--of the work. This class in participatory artmaking includes theoretical readings from Bourriaud, Kester, Bishop, Hyde, Jackson and others, along with practical projects driven by the students’ own creative interests.
This course explores theories of relationality and “relational aesthetics,” the growing body of relational work in contemporary arts, and the practicalities of making relational performance. Students do theoretical and critical reading and writing while producing a structured series of creative projects both in and out of the classroom.
Art and Social Change
1991
Artist and Audience
1995
Art, Resilience, and Sustainability
2020
Artists Writing
1987
Career Tools and Strategies
2018
Conversations in Contemporary Culture
1992
Cultural Studies and the Visual Arts
1994
Digital Culture
2002
Drawing in the Margins
1990
Hunger
2023
Imagining the Artist
1996
Memory Culture
2007
Politics of Representation
1989
Postmodernism: Coming to Terms
1994
Readings in Multicultural Production
1991
The Art World: In Theory and In Practice
1991
Theory
1997
Tourism Studies
–
Visual Culture
1999
What makes a site specific?
2025
Tourism and Culture (Florence)
An opportunity for students to reflect critically on their current and past international expereinces, this course includes readings from the burgeoning field of tourism studies, with a focus on critical tourism studies and human geography (rather than on the social science and management end of the field). We draw on the wealth of literature about travel, reading travelogues as well as theoretical essays. We use Italy (and students' forays into other European destinations) as case studies, but take a comparativist approach that looks also at critical literature about travel in other parts of the world with very different cultural, historical, and economic issues. The course is conducted as a seminar with reading and discussion and an intensive writing component.
Creativity Lab (Florence)
This is a studio arts course that is not discipline-specific. Rather, it accommodates students interested in art, theatre, dance, music, fiction or poetry, allowing participants to conduct some work in their areas of expertise but also enabling students to experiment with unfamiliar media. It is structured to accommodate major and non-majors, newcomers to art making as well as advanced practitioners. Students with an already established creative direction are able to propose, execute and reflect on one or more sustained projects, while students discovering new creative practices can find a constructive environment in which to explore creative process. While the emphasis is on individual creative development in a workshop setting, the course also includes team-building collaborative exercises and selected readings on the creative process.
Culture, Geographic, and Culinary Gateways to Diversity (Washington, DC)
Coming Soon
Gateways to the Arts (Singapore)
Coming Soon
Independent Study
This class offeres upper division undergrads a chance to explore non traditional media and time-based concepts in art. The approach is simultaneously theoretical and technical, combining hands-on exercises with reading. Projects are assigned in the following areas: Conceptual Art, Performance, and Environmental Installation.
Introduction to the Historiography, Theory, and Methods of Visual Culture
Explores the intersection of art creation and curatorial practices, examining historical, theoretical, and studio components.
Topics in Visual Culture
1. What did we learn in 2020
2. Abolition
Colloquium
Coming Soon
Introduction to Graduate Studies (2009, 16, 18)
This class was created to introduce graduate students in the Art Department to the concepts, practices and methods that will allow for a successful graduate experience and ongoing career in the visual arts. In addition to exploring sources, processes, dissemination and context for artmaking, the class will also provide students with an introduction to the theoretical underpinnings of contemporary visual culture. Attention will also be given to campus and community resources and to individual startegies for graduate study.
Interdisciplinary Critique
This interdisciplinary critique group provides and opportunity for Grad students to dispel some of the isolation of studio production by meeting to discuss work together.
