5-6 pages of written text – standard font, Times New Roman
Formatting your exhibition guide
You must email me with your theme in order to get credit for the assignment!!!!!
Working Themes proposals due to me by April 4th (return from Spring Break)
Submission via Canvas.
(see formatting your paper for further information)
Prompt for paper:
You have been tasked with the role of the guest curator at a museum and you have full creative control to put together an exhibit of artworks based around a carefully curated collection of 6 works. The works + theme of your exhbition should reflect the RENAISSANCE and BAROQUE chronological scope of this class (i.e. your works should draw from a time scheme of c. 1350-1700).
Step 1. Develop a theme for you exhibition It may be helpful to think of an artwork that you have really enjoyed exploring from class. What themes does it offer up relative to discussion of art + aesthetics? What questions/emotions/messages does your artwork raise? Themes about representing a specific saint? The role of art in sacred experience? Art as mechanism for communig with the divine? Daring and experimental use of materials? The intersection of art and popular piety/religious practices? Ideas about power and wealth? Ideas about gender, race, social class? Intersections of the Christian + pagan worlds? Small scale devotional works? Massive fresco cycles? Art and myth? Art and the Body? The possibilities are vast here, and only limited by the extent of your imagination and the success of your paper depends on thinking hard and critically at this stage to develop a theme that is reflective of independent and critical thinking. Looking back to our weekly themes may also help you begin to think about a general approach (which you will want to whittle down)
You will also need to develop a juicy title!
The more specific and carefully considered your theme is, the better and more coherent your collection of works will be. Select an idea or subject that you find interesting of compelling! General themes such as “Religion and Art” or “Icons” will be less successful because their scope is so broad, and it will be difficult to come to anything more than a generalized set of conclusions. Consider why your specific theme is compelling; you can have fun with this! Doing web searches for exhibitions produced by any of the museums on this sheet will also help to generate some ideas about how exhibitions have typically been framed by their curators. Please do not hesitate to set up an appointment with me to discuss your ideas if you are having a hard time narrowing down your focus.
Step 2. Your collection will feature 6 artworks in total. No more than three may come from the course toolkits/discussion. That means at least three you must find independently and must come from verified museum websites (i.e. not personal blogs or less scholarly sources) – details below (and on the Canvas) on finding other images. Please ask if you are unsure.
Step 3. Do some research on each image; your toolkits provids good support, but the entries you will find on your museum web search pages also have lots of great info (see list below). You will cite these entries in MLA or Chicago style – more info on this in upcoming classes.
Step 4: Write the paper. It consists of:
Introduction (1 page)
Catalogue (3 pages – half page entries for each) + half page “floorplan” map with image thumbnails
Conclusion (1 page)
Works Cited page
The Introduction: Compile a one page (double spaced, 12 point Times new Roman font, standard margins) exhibition “catalogue” introduction that consists of two paragraphs. You should begin with an introduction of the theme of your exhibition and why it is interesting/relevant/important, and what it helps to reveal more broadly about artistic expression and production.
Your second paragraph should also explain the physical set-up for your exhibition. How have you staged it and why? How have you organized and displayed the works (in a chronological progression? By some other organizational means?). Essentially think about how the arrangement of your chosen works and space of your exhibition may add extra contours to the exhibition itself.
The Catalogue: Then follows the exhibition “catalogue” itself (3 pages). Write a half-page paragraph catalogue “entry” which briefly analyzes some of the visual elements of the work, noting the artist, title, date, materials and dimensions. Your half-page entry must also craft a short description of each work, touching on important contextual/historical information as well as its essential formal elements. You can think of the succinct entries for your objects on the museum websites, or wall plaques as helpful guides!
Your exhibition guide should also include a “floor plan” map of your space (you can be creative and have fun with your space!!) with accompanying thumbnails of your images, making it clear where they are placed within the physical context of your exhibition space.
The Conclusion: Conclude your exhibition catalogue (1 page ) by discussing how these works create a harmonious response to your theme. Here, you should also draw comparisons and contrasts between the works you have selected. Why did you select these images? How do your works function together as a collection of works? How do they respond to one another on the smaller levels and more broadly – to your theme? Extract what you think are some of the most powerful linking threads of your collection (you do not need to go through all the connections point by point); picking the most profound connections will help to orient your reader and to illustrate the broader intentions and point of your collection.
For finding images: There are several ways to go about finding relevant artworks. Start with your text!
You should also browse through the online catalogs of major museums, which have searchable database collections, which you can search for by keywords, date, artists, and more!
The Metropolitan Museum of Art https://www.metmuseum.orgLinks to an external site.
The Louvre, Paris https://www.louvre.fr/enLinks to an external site.
The National Gallery, London https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/Links to an external site.
The National Gallery, DC https://www.nga.govLinks to an external site.
The Walters Museum, Baltimore https://thewalters.orgLinks to an external site.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston http://www.mfa.orgLinks to an external site.
The Carnegie Museum of Art https://cmoa.orgLinks to an external site.
The Getty Museum, Los Angeles http://www.getty.eduLinks to an external site.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art https://www.philamuseum.orgLinks to an external site.
The Victoria and Albert Museum, London https://www.vam.ac.ukLinks to an external site.
The Cleveland Museum of Art http://www.clevelandart.orgLinks to an external site.
Wikimedia: While you may not use Wikipedia for your research, Wikimedia frequently has good reproductions of paintings and is relatively searchable. Once you find an image here, you should verify it and information it in a more scholarly source like a museum website, as there are often inconsistencies.
