Wisdom in Art: How Art and Artifacts Educate

(1 Credit Hour) · Undergraduate

How does art educate? What knowledge, ancient or new, is available to us in artifacts? This course is aimed at introducing practices of close-looking at art and artifacts in order to further understand them, individually and within their wider context, and unlock their wisdom. We will invite a broad understanding of pedagogical sources to consider how art and artifacts might "instruct" us as well as how we learn from them. Various art objects – paintings, sculptures, prints, and photographs – will be experienced and examined across the rich array of campus collections and archives. Through close-looking and visual and comparative analysis we will expand our learning and develop our practices of devotion to art in ways applicable to other mediums of wisdom as well as art.