Renaissance, Baroque Art Feature in Seminar on Teaching Art History in Context

---

Twenty faculty members from CIC member institutions relished the opportunity this spring to delve deeply into the Renaissance and Baroque art collections of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. They participated in the second of three annual week-long summer seminars on “Teaching Pre-modern European Art in Context,” made possible through the generous support of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. The 2011 seminar on “Living with Art in Renaissance and Baroque Europe (c. 1300–1700),” which took place June 19–24 at the High Museum, was led by Gary M. Radke, Dean’s Professor of Humanities at Syracuse University and consulting curator of Italian art at the High.

Designed for faculty members at institutions without large campus museums or proximity to major art museums and who are responsible for teaching art history, the seminar offered opportunities to reconnect museum objects with their original form and function by considering them with a period eye in the museum as well as in the context of a local church. “This close interaction with works is something I intend to use more in my teaching of art history, both in the classroom and at museums. It allows us to experience the art more directly, and to understand the life and times it represents,” said participant Mark Merline, associate professor of art at Marian University (WI).

Participants during the week also explored strategies for teaching art history and discussed museum conservancy, toured the Atlanta Art Conservation Center, and took a day trip to the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens to view its collection of related Kress Renaissance and Baroque works. As Sarahh Scher, assistant professor of art at Upper Iowa University noted, “Many of the art historians who participated, myself included, are the only art history teachers at their respective colleges, so it was really beneficial to exchange ideas, tools, and methods over the course of the week.”