ARTH 344 EXHIBITION
REVIEW WRITING ASSIGNMENT.
Write a 3-4 page (1000 words) paper on ONE of the following
exhibitions:
- The Baroque Woodcut,at the National
Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, West Building, ground floor (The Gallery
is open M-S from 10:00 until 5:00 and Sundays from 11:00 until 6:00.
Don’t even think of trying to park: take the Metro. Archives is a close stop). Most of the works in this exhibition are by artists we shall not
study this semester, but they are representative of the period and relate
to works we shall study.
- Poussin
and Nature: Arcadian Visions, at the
Metropolitan
Museum of Art in
New York. Take the Artsbus to
New York and spend several hours in the
exhibition. The Met has a “pay what
you want” admissions policy, so don’t feel pressured to give them as much
as they seem to demand.
Your word-processed paper is due in HARD COPY before or in class on 4/10. E-mailed assignments are not accepted. No late papers accepted without prior
arrangement (and evidence that work is substantially advanced).
Imagine that you are an art critic
for a weekly magazine with an educated nonspecialist audience in their 20s and
30s. You have been asked to review one
of these exhibitions. The reviewer’s job
is to inform a would-be audience about an exhibition and to provide some
context for it. Therefore you need both
to describe AND critique the exhibit and its rationale. Read reviews in the national media and watch
“Around Town ” on WETA for
ideas. This is NOT a research paper: you
do not need to provide biographical detail on the artists, but you can provide
context by bringing in materials from class discussion and the assigned
readings. Critics write from their own
backgrounds, so feel free to bring in things you have learned in class or from
the readings. Also feel free to mention
when the exhibition confirms something you’ve learned elsewhere and when it
challenges it.
Visit the exhibition of your choice (or, ideally, both and
then choose).
§ Start by
thinking of the exhibition’s arrangement as someone’s conscious creation (and
not as if it is “natural”). What are your initial impressions? Be very conscious of your reactions to the
display.
Questions to help you
get started.
1. What seems to be the premise for the exhibit arrangement? What
aspects seem to matter most to the museum? How were the works chosen for
inclusion in this space? Why these and not others? How does the
room relate to its neighbor? What story does this room tell?
2. Special exhibitions involve choice. The Poussin exhibition borrows works from around the world. The National Gallery exhibition is in house,
but still involved choice from its vast collection. What is accomplished by bringing these works
together?
3. Does the display make you aware of where these works originally were and
the purposes that they served in the late 16th- and 17th century?
Is this aspect important to a museum display?
4. What can you learn about art from this period by seeing originals on
display in a museum setting? What sorts of works are included? What
is their scale? What media and techniques are represented? Do you have a sense of why different media are
used for different purposes? About how
different media relate to one another?
5. How have the works been installed? Consider why certain works are
grouped together. Does the arrangement make sense to you (does it create
a narrative)? Notice things like placement, spacing, and lighting. What difference do these make (individually
and collectively)? Are some of the works privileged over others by their
position? What do you infer from seeming intangibles like framing and
lighting?
6. Be conscious of your experience in visiting the rooms. How do you
feel in the exhibition? What is the role of your surroundings in your
experience?
7. Is learning an important part of the museum experience? What did you learn about late 16th and 17th-century art
from your visit to the exhibition? How did you learn? How would you evaluate the labels, wall text, gallery
guides (if any), or materials available elsewhere in the museum? Do these
represent the best way to provide such information? What other
alternatives might there be? Would you provide other kinds of materials
in other formats?
8. Is there one or more work that you find particularly interesting? If you, feel free to discuss it in some
detail, always bearing in mind how it relates to the exhibition as a
whole.
9. What did you learn from a visit to this room that you could not have
learned from class, a lecture, a film, or a book? What could you learn
from class, a lecture, a film, or a book that you did not learn from the
display itself? Should these be mutually exclusive activities?
10. What other questions have
occurred to you?
Writing an effective
essay:
1. The length of the paper is intentionally short to permit you (through
the process of revision) to write something substantial and succinct.
2. Recall that you are evaluating and providing context for a display. This assignment, therefore, requires you to take a position and argue it.
3. Your essay must be very specific and focused on those issues you choose
to feature. This is meant to be your work based upon your observations
and reactions from an on-site analysis. See the information on plagiarism in the Writing Tips (website) to avoid
this.
4. Choose your best ideas for inclusion and then build up your case point
by point.
5. Good writing is essential to getting your ideas across. Your
audience cannot be expected to be a mind reader. See the Writing
Tips on the website for more specific advice: I am looking for you to
master certain aspects of good writing and they will factor into your grade. Don't forget the wonderful people at the Writing Center!
Important details:
1. Please just staple
your paper in the upper left-hand corner. Do not use a plastic cover and do not waste trees making a title
page. Just put your name and “Review of …” at the
top left-hand side of your first page of text, e.g.
Bernini, Gianlorenzo
Review of
Begin your text
here ...
2. I prefer to read
a text that has an unjustified right margin (like this assignment), but this is
not a requirement.
3. Plan ahead—the
printer did not work etc. are not valid excuses.
4. It
is extremely important that you keep
a copy of your paper. Accidents do happen.
5. Proofread carefully. Papers containing numerous careless errors
will not be accepted.