Teaching Philosophy, Part 1: Looking Skills

Please permit me to say a bit about my teaching philosophy, as it informs much of the material on this website. 

Text-based disciplines develop close reading skills, but only a student who ventures into an art history class chances upon an opportunity to develop his or her close looking skills.  These close looking skills include: the careful observation of detail; the precise recall of images no longer before the eye; the awareness of the scale of objects and monuments and their relation to the beholder through space; and the recognition of patterns and of differences.

These skills form the foundation for art historical study and should therefore inform the teaching of the traditional art history survey. 

• One develops attention to detail simply by slowing down the looking of the students and developing their patience with visual material. 
• Practice in visual recall may be incorporated into a class by naming a previously-studied image and asking the students what they remember about it before showing it for comparison purposes. 
• A tape measure provides the best tool for the development of the appreciation of scale. 
• The careful selection of images - for example, showing corners, floor-to-ceiling views, and people standing within a space - and the presentation of an image in a church with the image’s location highlighted on a plan of the church or a detail alongside an image of the whole with its location highlighted cultivate spatial awareness. 
  • Slide: Image and Location and Spatial Awareness
  • Slide: Relation of Detail to Whole and Spatial Awareness
•  Finally, the traditional slide comparison enables the recognition of pattern and difference.  Power Point reduces the scale of two projected images; details therefore become essential.
  • Slide: Details and Comparisons