Approaches to Teaching
Description * Comparison * Museums
Each of my courses emphasizes core art historical skills: description and comparison.
In the sections below, I describe my approach to these skills, share sample assignments, and student work.
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While engaging with the cultural resources of NYC is not an explicit Learning Objective, I strongly emphasize the value of extending classroom learning with real objects in the world-class museums available to Queens College students. My hope is that each student will leave my classes planning their next museum visit, confident and capable in the galleries.
Descriptive Skills
As I frequently remind students, art historical arguments are supported with description. Unlike text-based disciplines that cite quotations, art historians cite images. Therefore, description is a core, fundamental skill, whether writing a 100-level essay or an advanced research paper.
A key learning objective in nearly every Art History course is learning to 'DESCRIBE, orally and in writing, art and architecture in an organized manner, using discipline-specific vocabulary.'
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First Day Exercise
Beginner students often believe that 'description is easy' and not a carefully-developed skill. To help them understand its difficulty and nuance, during the first class meeting I use a tried-and-true exercise, pictured at left.
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Students work in pairs.
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One student, who can see an image drawn from the course material, attempts to describe the image to their partner, who cannot see the image.
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The second student draws the image according to their partner's description.
The results are usually clumsy and, in the best cases, funny. I do not display or collect the drawings. Students are assured that the exercise is not meant to assess their artistic ability.
When we discuss the experience, as a class, students often report that describing was trickier than they expected. For instance, if they were describing a portrait in profile, they often forgot to say which direction the profile faced. They quickly realize the need to carefully consider description and to work, throughout the semester, to build descriptive skill and vocabulary.
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In addition, this exercise guarantees that every student meets at least one other student on the first day. Because the drawing exercise is low-stakes and fun, it sets the tone for experimentation and discovery that encourages students to participate throughout the semester.
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AI and Descriptive Writing
*Note that this assignment was developed with support from the Assignment Innovation Project through the CUNY Graduate and Undergraduate Programming Office.
In the second week of class I assign an 'AI and Descriptive Writing' exercise, attached.
Students write a short description of an artwork and enter it into an AI Image generator. They reflect on the generated image, considering which elements translated and which did not. Then, they refine their descriptions and repeat the process.
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The AI Image generator provides immediate feedback to students about the precision and thoroughness of their descriptive prompts. The goal is not to perfectly replicate the original image, but to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of their descriptive writing.
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Examples of Student Work
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Masaccio's "Holy Trinity"
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Example from the Godwin-Ternbach museum, on QC's campus
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Student comments best express the success of the assignment:
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“This process demonstrated how important specificity is when describing artwork.”
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“This activity helped me understand that being specific and clear in descriptions makes a big difference.”
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In addition, I have noticed that students' exam essays tend to include more specific and thorough description following these exercises.
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Exam Essays: Unknown Analysis
In 100-level courses, students frequently write "Unknown Essays," where they describe, categorize, and identify an image that we have not studied by comparing it to an image from class. This exercise requires students to create and support an implicit comparison with specific description. After completing the activities focused on Description, students essays include more specific and thorough description.
Unknown Analysis Instructions: Write a succinct, organized description of this image, demonstrating your knowledge of the period and place that it likely comes from.
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I recommend that you start by deciding which class unit the Unknown fits into (Early Renaissance, High Renaissance, Northern Renaissance, Italian Baroque, Spanish Baroque).
Then look through the images from that unit and choose a specific comparison image.
2. Write and underline the ID info (artist, title, date) for your comparison image at the top of your essay.
Think of your essay as a comparison between the “known” image from your notes and the new image.
As you start writing…
3. Identify the medium. What is this made from? How can you tell? Be sure to cite specific details.
4. Discuss the composition.
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Where is the focal point? How can you tell?
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How are the bodies defined? Do you see shadows, interesting poses, etc.?
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How is space suggested? How does the artist convince the viewer that people and objects have mass and volume? How does the artist make the flat surface look like it extends with depth?
5. Read your essay and underline specific terms from class. (This is the chance to add more terms if you haven’t already.) Be sure that you are demonstrating that you know what the terms mean by applying them to specific details from the Unknown image.
6. You do NOT need to discuss the meaning of the image or identify specific religious figures. If you recognize someone, use their name, otherwise it’s fine to identify them by their dress, etc.
Comparative and Analytical Skills
Comparison is the core of art historical analysis and it is assessed through exam essays and papers. Many students encounter a common pitfall with these assignments: they describe and analyze each object separately — in paragraphs or pages — and then write a short statement along the lines of “this is how they are similar and different.” These essays and papers do not actually compare the objects or build critical thinking skills. Years of teaching has demonstrated that it is crucial to carefully explain and model comparative analysis to teach students to think and write in this way.
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In my 200-level Baroque class, we begin with a two-week long unit on how the Baroque style emerges from and in contrast to the Renaissance. This provides ample opportunity to explain and model comparative analysis.
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Students are provided with a simple handout listing the major qualities of each style (attached), and then we regularly discuss how and why particular artworks embody each style compared to another.
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By the time students write comparison essays on the Midterm exam, this method of comparative analysis has become a habit and their essays describe major qualities (e.g. line, color, light) sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, adding up to a genuine comparison.
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When 200-level students visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, their guide and assignment incorporates a comparative approach.
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The comparative approach is deepened in the following question, where students are asked to consider the wall text in Gallery 609 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
REQUIRED Question 3. Gallery 609: 1500 Shift
Think of a gallery as a visual argument, or a persuasive essay. Curators add wall text to explain their “thesis,” and then they support the thesis with the works shown in the gallery.
On the long block of Introductory wall text, “Sacred Images and the Viewer” it reads: “Around 1500, religious painting in Italy underwent a major shift.” Then the wall text lists several changes, such as
(1) a move toward single, large paintings rather than polyptychs (many smaller paintings combined),
(2) compositions that connect to viewers and reach beyond the border of the painting,
(3) sacred figures are transformed into “grand entities.”
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Bold statements like these require support. How do the paintings in this gallery provide that support?
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In 1-2 paragraphs, for each of the three points listed above, choose at least one painting that supports the point. Describe how your chosen works demonstrate the ca. 1500 shift the curators describe. Remember! This requires you to create an implicit comparison with earlier galleries since you are describing a change.
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Students then evaluate the paintings in the gallery, comparatively, and describe how they support the wall text ‘thesis statement.’ (See student examples above.)
In their final project for the course, students are the ‘curators’ and they compose an exhibition gallery comparing one stylistic quality across four works of their choosing.
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The examples linked below demonstrate three students’ approaches to comparing broad categories such as ‘world building’ (a Computer Science major’s evocative description of setting), naturalism (a cat lover’s clever way to approach the depiction of anatomy), and portraiture.
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Museums
In every class, students visit New York City museums, including the Frick Collection, the Hispanic Society, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. These museum visits are the cornerstone of my art history classes.
Between the Fall of 2022 and the Spring of 2024, more than 250 students enrolled in ARTH 102 visited the Frick Collection with this guide.
When surveyed about their experience:
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97% reported that they had not visited the museum previously, but 75% planned to return after their first visit.
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84% agreed that the museum visit deepened their understanding of the course material, 72% agreeing strongly.
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In particular, 71% of respondents said the museum visit made them care about the class material more.
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Museum assignments for all Undergraduate Classes are included in the description of individual courses on the "Courses" page.