Art is a Window to Other Worlds
What makes us fall in love with art and museums?
For me, I was first conditioned to enjoy them as spaces. Then I discovered they were windows to the world: past and present, near and far.
Before social media became what it is today (and whatever it will be in the future), museums were the place to find images and objects that provided a visible, tangible connection to another person’s experience of the world.
When I was growing up, my parents signed my sister and me up for art classes at our local museums. They were fun — we made messes, we played with different tools and media, we got to put our name on something we created.
I still have some things framed that I made (that don’t look like crappy kid art), which I hung in my apartment… when I lived somewhere.
My dad took us to museums regularly, and his approach was to walk through at a slow but consistent pace and only stop if he wanted to point something out to us or if we were interested in a piece. So we became casually exposed to world class art in 30 minute increments in galleries, and our opinions were respected and encouraged.
No pain, no punishment, just regular, easy engagement of our curiosity. Kids are endlessly curious — they’ll enjoy things if you let them follow their attention and ask questions and share their opinions.
The museums in my hometown (Fort Worth, Texas) are mostly in one neighborhood and have big grassy areas around them, with some fountains and seating areas. We’d go as a family to take photos or play in the grass.
So we learned to enjoy spending time in and around museums. They were just normal places we went, like church or school or a park or downtown.
I liked them because they were clean and airy and light spaces, and I could imagine myself as a princess in whatever world the exhibit was showing.
But I still didn’t think that much about art.
I went off to college and began studying mathematics. My freshman year, my classmates asked about my intro art history class. Um, what?
It turned out that my school, Williams College, is known for its Art History program. Everyone takes it.
It’s a weird thing to get peer pressured into, but it’s true.
So I signed up for ArtH 101: Introduction to Western Sculpture & Architecture for my sophomore fall.
The professor, EJ Johnson, was incredible. He would walk in to the lecture hall with Soane, his Irish Setter, who would sit patiently at his feet during class.
The lights dimmed, the projectors whirred, and Professor Johnson would transport us across time and space to describe how and why something was made, and what it meant then and now.
The objects — and the stories my professors told about them — made the world, history, cultures, and other people so much more tangible & relatable than anything else ever has.
What else could be more useful or important to study? So I switched majors.
In looking for his bio, I discovered that Professor Johnson had a similar experience himself:
As was true of many Ephs of his generation, Johnson came to Williamstown in 1955 not particularly interested in art. He was more interested in studying theater. “I knew nothing about art when I came to Williams,” he said.
“I took what was called Art 1–2 in my sophomore year, under protest. Friends of mine said that I should take it, that it was a wonderful course. And I said, ‘I have no interest in art at all.’ But they insisted,” Johnson said.
“Whitney Stoddard ’35 was teaching the first half of the course, and after about two lectures I suddenly realized that I just loved what was going on. Whitney was a wonderful teacher. And I had never found anything that had interested me so much. That’s how I got hooked.”
After graduation, as much as I’d loved studying my major, I didn’t expect to keep up with Art History much.
But I found myself creating lessons and courses to teach at the American school I was working at in Morocco. I’d hear about something going on in another class & realize the students would learn it better if I shared a bit of Art History and visual references for the material:
- The 8th graders were learning about Impressionism, so I explained what the movement and style was & that it was actually a rebellious art form in its time.
- The 11th grade art students needed to learn religious iconography, so I taught them about Christianity using the scenes from the Arena Chapel.
- The 12th grade IB History students were studying WWII, so I turned my senior paper on Nazi Pro-Aryan Propaganda into an 80-minute presentation.
Then I moved to Bulgaria, and my school required that we teach electives. So I created my own Introduction to Art History class, using a syllabus Professor Johnson kindly emailed to me at my request.
When I moved to New York to work in production at a graphic design studio, even though I was untrained in the industry, art history had equipped me with the ability to analyze things I looked at, so I was able to understand most of what our creative teams were working on & learn the basic rules of graphic design.
No matter where I have gone or what I have done, art history has wiggled its way into my world. Art and museums consistently help me learn, understand, and connect to people.
Like they say in the MTA, if you see something, say something.
When we see something, we can feel something or understand something that otherwise would just be an abstract idea: the Greek gods, Jesus, the bubonic plague, time, modern life, abstraction itself, Wall Street…
The more we see, the more we think, the more we have something worth saying.
Katherine works remotely while she travels the world — on the road since June 2014. If you liked this piece, please give it a ❤ Thank you!
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