Academics

ARTH 250H | Objects, Museums, and Meanings (3 credits)

Professor Elizabeth Manekin
Approach: Visual and Performing Arts (VP)
Connection: Experiential Education
IDEAs in Action: HI-ABROAD

Meeting daily in London’s museums, with special attention to the British Museum, the National Gallery, and the Courtauld Gallery, students in this course will learn to analyze objects and display in dialogue with scholarly articles on those same subjects. Through close examination of its museums, students also will learn about London itself: its collections speak simultaneously to a global heritage and a uniquely English legacy.

Through this course, students will:

• Develop and fine-tune skills of visual and material literacy
• Cultivate abilities to discern between observation and interpretation in visual and text-based source material
• Interpret and discuss objects in connection with the context of their creation, collection, and display
• Practice engaged scholarship (a form of collaborative inquiry between academics and practitioners that leverages their different perspectives to generate useful knowledge)
• Reflect thoughtfully in writing and discussion about museums and display in relation to course concepts
• Contextualize the history of museums and become familiar with museums of London and their distinguishing characteristics