Blog Category: Teaching

Florentine, View of Florence with the Campanile and Duomo, Orsanmichele, and Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, Italy. © 2006, SCALA, Florence / ART RESOURCE, N.Y.; artres.com; scalarchives.com

Artstor is introducing curriculum guides–collections of images from the Artstor Digital Library based on syllabi for college courses–compiled by faculty members and experts around the country. Learn more here.

History of Architecture and Urbanism I
Amber Wiley, Visiting Assistant Professor, Architecture, Tulane University

This curriculum guide is global in focus, including both Western and non-Western developments, covering the time period from prehistory to the medieval era. The survey highlights a variety of aspects of the built environment such as architecture, urban settlements, and landscapes. Coursework investigates monumental civic architecture, religious structures, as well as domestic buildings, the urban form, and architectural theory. The guide utilizes architectural images to examine the ways that religious, political, and social structures were expressed through the melding of architecture and landscapes. Central to this architectural analysis is how different cultures and communities made meaning in their everyday lives through design, discussion on what architecture reveals about societal concerns and hierarchies, and the ways in which natural settings are exploited for sustenance and protection – generally speaking, how architecture can be viewed as a cultural product of a particular historical milieu.

Artstor is introducing curriculum guides–collections of images from the Artstor Digital Library based on syllabi for college courses–compiled by faculty members and experts around the country. Learn more here.

Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Socrates, 1787, The Metropolitan Museum of Art . Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Introduction to Philosophy
Carl Hammer, Lecturer, Communication Studies, University of MN, Twin Cities

This curriculum guide introduces the student to the basic problems, methods and theories of western philosophy.  It looks at issues in the theory of reality, knowledge and ethics. This includes some of the main problems in the philosophy of mind, religion, and action. It begins with a look at some of the tools and methods of philosophy, such as deduction, induction, and definition. Images allow students to envision real and imaginary examples of the problems and theories in philosophy, as well as provide an engaging visual “anchor” to aid in their retention. 

Artstor is introducing curriculum guides–collections of images from the Artstor Digital Library based on syllabi for college courses–compiled by faculty members and experts around the country. Learn more here.

Unknown Spanish artist, Conquest of Mexico; The arrival of Cortes in Veracruz and the reception of Moctezuma’s ambassadors, 16th century. Image and original data provided by Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.; artres.com

Colonial Latin America curriculum guide
Rachel Moore, Associate Professor, History, Clemson University

This curriculum guide explores a wide range of perspectives on the colonial period in Latin America. This includes encounters of the Spanish and the Portuguese (as well as the Dutch) with indigenous populations in Mexico and South America. By analyzing these images alongside readings, the student will gain a fuller sense of the mindset of the participants in each historical event and, ultimately, a fuller sense of the historical event itself.

Section 1: The Age of Encounters: Impressions of the New World
Images for this selection address European impressions of the New World in the earliest years of the Spanish encounters with Latin America. Most of these images were produced by those who had no direct contact with Latin America and thus are both fantastical and reflective of pre-contact mindsets in Europe.
View the image group

Section 2: Iberian Precedents: The Legacy of Convivencia in Spain and Portugal
Images for this selection examine in detail the precedents for the conquest of the New World set by the Muslim occupation of the Spanish peninsula from 711-1492 and the subsequent Spanish reconquest of the peninsula. These images include reference to popular figures, such as Santiago Matamoros, and building styles that would appear in Spain and Latin America as a result of the convivencia.
View the image group

Alexandria, Map, 1619 | Image and original data provided by Bryn Mawr College

Navigating the tremendous number of images in the Artstor Digital Library can be daunting, particularly to those in fields outside of art history. Where to start looking for images for, say, an Introduction to Philosophy class? To address that hurdle, we are introducing curriculum guides – collections of images from the Artstor Digital Library based on syllabi for college courses.

The mission of Aalto University is to create a new science and arts community. In this video, chief information specialist Eila Rämö explains how Aalto uses Artstor.

Daniel Meader | Marionette Head and Torso | Image and data from Detroit Institute of Arts

By Mark Branner, University of Hawaii, Manoa

Nigerian | Puppet: Ekon Society | Seattle Art Museum; seattleartmuseum.org

I have the great privilege of teaching an introductory college-level course on puppetry. Even though it is an introductory course, it is actually classified as an upper division course, which means that I generally have juniors and seniors straggling in, looking for an easy “basket-weaving” escape. There are even sniggers from some of the participants when I ask them why they are in the class. This is all pretty understandable. Just put the words together: “College. Puppets.” Already it feels like a bad Saturday Night Live sketch. No, we’re not saving the world (or destroying it) through biomedical engineering. We’re not planning a manned mission to Venus. We’re studying puppets, for crying out loud. What’s the earthly value in that?

Wine Making (Vine Shoots, Putti Gathering Grapes and Male Bust; Grape-gathering Cupids); detail | c. 350 CE | Chiesa di S. Costanza (Rome, Italy) | Image and original data provided by SCALA, Florence/ART RESOURCE, N.Y. ; artres.com ; scalarchives.com | (c) 2006, SCALA, Florence / ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

Gregory K. Martin, Ph.D.
Upper School Director, La Jolla Country Day School

In a compelling study of Western United States history, Patricia Nelson Limerick quotes Nannie Alderson, a former Virginian who moved to Montana in 1883. Alderson, looking back on a unique feature of her experience, recollected that there was on the frontier an abundance of cans: “Everyone in the country lived out of cans […] and you would see a great heap of them outside every little shack” (“Closing the Frontier and Opening Western History”).

French | Hat (Top); ca. 1820 | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

By Rachel Pollock, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Artstor helps me surmount a primary difficulty in teaching historical hat-making to my graduate students in theatrical costume production: diverse visual examples of our topics.

In millinery class, we consider not only styles and materials from which hats are made, but also their history—the provenance and significance of a given style, and depictions of it in art and advertising of the period. We analyze its cultural place of origin, and discuss ways in which its meaning might be explored or subverted in the context of stage performance and costume. I am fortunate to have access to theatrical costume storage and my university’s modest archive of antique clothing artifacts for practical tangible examples, but the bounds of those collections are finite.

James Conlon | The Great Mosque of Djenne, South façade, exterior | image: 2008 | Djenne, Mali

Mrs. Michelle Apotsos
Stanford University
Doctoral candidate Art History/Architectural History

As a graduate student at Tufts University, I was once given the opportunity to give a lecture to a class of architectural history students on West African architectural form for the purpose of unsettling some common notions that inform Western conceptions of the built environment. I decided to present a case study of the Djenné mosque in Mali, West Africa as an example of an architectural tradition that utilizes distinctive structures, materials, and iconographies to resonate with its cultural context. The experience itself not only revealed to me the inherent challenges of teaching architectural studies in Africa, but also the necessity of having high-quality visual tools in order to recreate a convincing three-dimensional spatial narrative. Thus began my ongoing love affair with Artstor.

On June 4, 1919, U.S. Congress passed the 19th Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing women the right to vote, and sent it to the states for ratification. To celebrate this momentous anniversary, we are featuring an essay by Stacy C. Hollander, senior curator and director of exhibitions at the American Folk Art Museum, on an anonymous 19th-century artist’s “Crazy” quilt (i.e., a quilt with no repeating motifs) and its message about women’s suffrage.

Artist unidentified; initialed “J.F.R.” | Cleveland-Hendricks Crazy Quilt, Cleveland-Hendricks Crazy Quilt | American Folk Art Museum, folkartmuseum.org

The constitutional amendment giving the vote to American women was not ratified until 1920. Therefore, the unidentified maker of this quilt voiced her political sentiments in one of the only socially acceptable means available to her in the late nineteenth century. Using the idiom of the Crazy quilt, she constructed a strong statement of Democratic sympathies in a highly fashionable format.