Case Studies from the Tang
Saturday, September 29, 2012
1:30-3:00 PM, WCC 236
Visualizing the liberal arts is the primary mission of the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College. We conceive of the Tang as a laboratory space for visual thinking and communication through object exhibition. Over the 11 years of our existence, we have developed an informal taxonomy of ways to make use of this laboratory space within and in dialogue with the curriculum. In this panel, we presented some case studies that demonstrated some of the ways our work—and play—in the Tang makes interdisciplinary learning happen, visibly.
Some questions we addressed: How can the pristine contemporary museum allow for—and welcome—the messiness of the laboratory, the hands-on work students need? Which museum-based pedagogies and assignments work best? Which kinds of collaborative museum projects have the most impact on students’ learning—and what is it students are learning there? And also: What kinds of positions, within the museum and also on the faculty, enable the best kinds of collaborations to happen? What structures are crucial to making those collaborations happen? How can faculty work with museum staff in curating and making good pedagogical use of exhibitions? What incentives, rewards and structures for faculty and staff are most effective?
John S. Weber, Dayton Director, Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College
Weber talked about the museum's overall approach to its teaching mission, focusing particularly on how the Tang has developed a committed user base of faculty by supporting their ideas and needs.
John S. Weber is the Dayton Director of the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, an interdisciplinary museum opened in 2000 to create links between contemporary art and other disciplines as part of the teaching effort at Skidmore. As director of the museum, Weber supervises the Tang's staff and oversees exhibitions, programs, collections, and the Tang website, as well as curating and writing for museum publications. Weber is also a member of the Skidmore faculty and teaches in the art history program. Before coming to Skidmore in 2004, he was the curator of education and public programs at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from 1993 to 2004. From 1987 to 1993 Weber served as curator of contemporary art at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. Degrees: Reed College, B.A.; University of California, San Diego, M.F.A. in Visual Arts.
Alison Barnes, Visiting Assistant Professor of English and Faculty Liaison to the Tang,
Skidmore College
Barnes talked about "Writing in the Tang," a writing seminar that uses constantly changing exhibitions and the permanent collection to teach expository writing skills and basic museum competency. Drawing on sample assignments from this seminar and a selection of assignments designed by other Skidmore faculty, she then discussed a new framework that organizes such assignments into four broad categories. This framework has quickly come to inform the way Tang staff and Skidmore faculty members understand museum-based assignments.
Alison Barnes teaches English and environmental studies at Skidmore College and serves as the faculty liaison to the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery. Specializing in museum-based writing courses, she serves as a peer advisor to faculty members as they design and implement assignments in museums. Degrees: Rhode Island School of Design, B.F.A. in photography; Syracuse University, M.F.A. in photography; The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, M.F.A. in creative writing.
Ray Giguere, Class of 1962 Term Professor and Chair of the Chemistry Department, Skidmore College
'Molecules that Matter' Opens at the College of Wooster, NPR
Raymond J. Giguere, Class of 1962 Term Professor, 2007-2012, joined the faculty at Skidmore in 1988; he currently is Chair of the Chemistry Department. Giguere has directed undergraduate research in organic synthesis in areas that include the application of microwave heating, as well as the study of novel intramolecular cycloadditions (allyl cation, tandem intramolecular Diels-Alder). In 1990 he created an interdisciplinary course for non-science majors, “Playing Nature: Organic Synthesis and Society, 1900-1975,” which formed the conceptual basis for the Molecules That Matter exhibition at the Tang Museum. Degrees: Kalamazoo College, B.A.; University of Hannover, Ph.D.
Sarah Goodwin, Professor of English and Kenan Professor of Liberal Studies, Skidmore College
Goodwin talked about how she integrates the Tang's changing exhibitions into her courses at both the introductory and advanced level. Her adaptable assignments aim to teach students how to read images and objects; to communicate visually and what that means; and to understand creativity and the notion of the avant garde. Goodwin also talked about the college's new initiative to investigate where, how, and how well our students are learning to communicate visually throughout the disciplines. Read and hear about Professor Goodwin's "Museum of Dilemmas".
Sarah Goodwin is Professor of English and Kenan Professor of Liberal Arts at Skidmore College and makes regular use of the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery in her teaching. Author of Kitsch and Culture: The Dance of Death in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Graphic Arts, she has also co-edited Death and Representation and two other volumes and has published essays on Wordsworth, Blake, Mary Shelley, Flaubert and others. Goodwin is among those leading an initiative at Skidmore to study how, where and how well students are learning to communicate visually.
Ryan Lynch, Assistant Registrar, Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College
D. Ryan Lynch is assistant registrar at the Tang Museum and has taught history at Skidmore College and Emory University. Coming from a library and museum background, she focuses on fostering multidisciplinary use of collections by academic audiences. With Alison Barnes, she coauthored the article, "From the classroom to the museum: adapting college teaching methods to the academic museum" (forthcoming). Lynch is is pursuing an MSIS in Library and Information Services at the University at Albany. Degrees: Brown University, A.B in Hispanic literature and culture; Emory University, M.A.
Rachel Seligman, Associate Curator, Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College
Rachel Seligman has worked at the National Museum of American Art, the Courthouse Gallery at the Lake George Arts Project in Lake George, New York, and was the Director and Curator of the Mandeville Gallery and Curator of the Permanent Collection at Union College, in Schenectady, New York from 1997 – 2011. She has taught Art History at Adirondack Community College in Glens Falls, New York, at Skidmore, and at the College of Saint Rose in Albany. Seligman has curated many historical and contemporary art exhibitions, and she has served on numerous gallery committees, exhibition juries, and professional panels. She is a frequent panelist for the regional SOS grants, and was recently chair of the Visual Arts Program panel of the New York State Council for the Arts. Degrees: Skidmore College, B.A. in Art History; George Washington University, M.A. in Art History.
Moderator:
Laurel Bradley
Director and Curator of the Perlman Teaching Museum and Senior Lecturer in Art and Art History, Carleton College