Objects as History
The Elevator Pitch
Objects as History asks students to explore the meaning and value that the past has for all fields of contemporary art and design. By learning how and why humans made things, students find connections, inspiration, depth, and greater purpose in their own creative endeavors.
Official Course Description
From the Course Catalogue
Objects as History asks you to look, with care, at how the world of “things” defines who we are and where we have come from. You will learn to ask fundamental questions that allow you to “read” an object: What is it? What are its visual characteristics? Who made it? How was it used? When we look at objects we will consider questions about material, style, context, function, and process. We will make connections across time periods and cultures from prehistory (times before recorded human histories) to the 19th-century. Can we trace a path from Neolithic tools to the first desktop computers? From medieval armor to contemporary drones? In this course we will address historical objects in ways that allow you to make connections to the present and to the disciplines you plan to enter as artists, designers, and strategic thinkers. This includes critically engaging the frameworks we use to determine what “counts” as art and design, how it is understood, what is considered valuable, and to whom. This might include engaging with current debates about museums as institutions, restitution of objects to the places and cultures from which they were taken, and where art and design even belongs. The course aims to create a common visual vocabulary useful to all students through lecture, analysis, discussion, and direct experience with works.
How One Instructor Describes This Course
“Objects as History explores the myriad ways in which the history of art and design are relevant for designers today. The course takes an inclusive approach by engaging with histories and traditions of making across the globe and by treating all objects made by human hands or conjured by human minds as worthy of inquiry and critical engagement. In other words, we don’t just look at art! Instead, each week we investigate a role that design has played in the history of human civilization. Sample topics include: redesigning the human, visualizing the divine, storytelling, the representation of power, transforming and outfitting the dead, exchange and encounter, fashioning the self, artistic genius/invention, and more. Students develop written and oral skills in order to discern and discuss the way things look and why. They also learn how to engage with historical, theoretical, and critical scholarship.
Objects as History encourages all students (regardless of discipline) to find meaning and value in the past. By learning how and why human beings made things, students find connections, inspiration, depth, and greater purpose in their own contemporary creative endeavors.”
–Megan Goldman-Petri, describing her Objects as History course
Week by Week Layout and Project Examples
“Although the class is arranged thematically, it also proceeds chronologically. We begin in the prehistoric period exploring the invention of technology and art, tools that redesign the human, and the first stories told through images. Our discussion of storytelling continues with the rise of cities and the invention of writing. This week also introduces students to the longstanding debate over words and images (ut pictura poesis).”
Megan Goldman-Petri
Formal Analysis
Weeks 2 – 6
I often incorporate skill building directly into the class with what I call “workshops”. In the storytelling week, for example, we have a “Formal Analysis Workshop”. Here students begin to build their visual vocabulary as we examine the techniques artists employ to construct narratives with images.
In weeks 2-5, students are assigned a discrete weekly task related to the formal analysis paper, so they are able to build their essays over time without feeling rushed or overwhelmed.
Click here to see writing examples.
Maize God emerging from a flower, Maya, 7th–9th century
Museum Exhibition Review
Weeks 7 – 8
Assignments here vary based on what is currently on view, but typically involve students using knowledge they have acquired in class to evaluate a museum exhibition. This semester for example, students learned about Greek representations of the gods in class and then visited the MET’s exhibition on Maya representations of the gods. They were not only asked to compare the two cultures’ visions of the divine, but also to think about how the art was presented and discussed in the context of the museum.
Memory and Monuments
Weeks 9 – 10
Some assignments are directly related to the week’s theme and are designed to have students apply previously learned knowledge in new contexts. For example, when learning about memory and monuments, students are given a choice of a site to visit and investigate in NYC where the memory of the city is housed in monuments, such as Battery Park.
The last part of the class examines the period from the beginning of the Renaissance through the Enlightenment from a variety of perspectives. We begin with the more canonical Italian Renaissance and explore the changing status of the artist and ideas of genius and artistic invention. We then dive into what Walter Mignolo coined the Dark Side of the Renaissance. Here we use objects to investigate the dissemination of people, technologies, things, and ideas across the globe, as well to examine the ways in which objects have participated in oppression. Through this exploration we attempt to understand the experience of enslaved peoples and the effects of colonialism.
Past and Present
Weeks 11 – 16
Here we engage in cross-cultural comparison. For example in Week 3 on Power, we compare representations of rulers in the Ancient Near East and Olmec, Mexico. We also directly investigate cultural encounters and issues of globalism across time in our sections on the Silk Roads (week 8), Age of Exploration (week 13), and the Transatlantic Slave Trade (week 14). During these sessions students develop comparative analysis skills which they may call upon in the exhibition review or their past and present project. On occasion, I also assign a comparative analysis essay.
What Students Take Beyond the First Year
“Students are given a strong foundation in the activities integral for research-based design. They read material that challenges their attention spans and invites them to think more deeply and in new ways. They develop familiarity navigating search engines, academic databases, and library catalogs. They gain experience designing their own research questions and constructing written arguments.
Consequently, students develop an ease discussing and writing about the way things look that is crucial for future communications. This ability to speak coherently about their own work not only helps them in class presentations, but also in future professional settings as well as grant and fellowship writing.
“History is invaluable to designers. During our section on the Italian Renaissance, students are able to see how artistic innovation is the direct result of rigorous study of the remains of the classical past. I truly believe the course produces more thoughtful and interesting design students because they learn to think critically about the ways in which their current work is a small part of the larger history of design. They find connection and inspiration in both similarity and difference, and thus begin to develop the skills necessary to investigate their own ideas and interests in more complicated ways. Most students come to our class with little to no interest in the past and resent that they are being made to take a history class in design school. All students leave having learned at least one thing they are excited about and many leave very curious, wanting to know more.”
–Megan Goldman-Petri