What should you be doing? Checking in....

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Wondering what you should be doing now for Women, Art, and Culture? How to know yourself what you should be doing week to week, and even plan ahead? 

First, check the Home tab of our website, YES! 

Second, notice that you can peek ahead by looking at the Experience Set 1 tab to see what is coming up in this set, and what the deadlines for all assignments are (at a glance!)

Third, you should already be in the thick of Assignment 1! Look at the tab 1: Museums. Remember, these are not just "a paper" but a whole range of experiences, that culminate in a project. You cannot do the "paper" the night before and expect your result to be acceptable. It doesn't work that way. 

What does this mean? You need to think of the whole Experience Set as ...well, a SET!! 

You need to come to class because what we do there will help you in the project at hand! If you must miss class, ask two class buddies for help! See the Class Info tab, scroll down for instructions for when you miss a class!

If you are just adding the class NOW, you need to do this very set of things to catch up also! Mainly, contact two class buddies (if you don't have yet be sure you makes some in tomorrow's Thursday seminar!!). Make a time to get together and discuss what has happened in class. Talk for AT LEAST an hour for each class you missed! AT LEAST! Remember that the best learning happens when you teach what you are learning to someone else. So be excited if someone asks you to meet with them about a class they missed! This is to YOUR advantage!

This week's Thursday seminars should be wonderful for making sure you are on track with Experience Set 1, the project for these first weeks of the class, and the paper you turn in on the 30th that documents these experiences. 

NOTICE THAT 

WEEK OF 16 SEPTEMBER—NO CLASS SO YOU CAN HAVE TIME TO VISIT MORE MUSEUMS!

You should have started the museum assignment already, already visiting and doing what you can during these hectic first weeks of classes. But we will not meet this whole week to give you as much room to complete it all as we can!! The assignment is due TUESDAY 30 SEPTEMBER!

READ AS MUCH OF THE FREELAND BOOK AS YOU CAN WHILE COMPLETING THE FIRST PROJECT! And come into our Tuesday Seminar on the 23rd, after our week of museuming to consider these questions, and having completed this preparation:

Tuesday, 23 September – Why is art a political issue at all?

• You should have read Freeland, Chs 4,5,7 by today and be prepared to discuss!

• Check out Freeland’s website: http://www.uh.edu/~cfreelan/ What sort of passionate thinker is she?

THESE ARE THE QUESTIONS WE WILL BE TALKING ABOUT IN CLASS, SO THINK ABOUT THEM AHEAD OF TIME! 

How will we activate web action to see how alive and dynamic women’s studies’ concerns are? That they involve people of passion individually and in groups? What is your stake in all this? How might it matter to you and to those you care about? You will be telling us about your museum experiences next week! Mentally prepare yourself to talk in class! Notice the Freeland readings for next week too!

Have a lot of fun!! 

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From a slide show on the establishment of the National Gallery of Art, here: http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/features/slideshows/paul-mellon-and-the-national-gallery-of-art.html#  

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Bits and ideas from Freeland's book to ponder while visiting, making notes, thinking, and writing. 

p105: "What should be the mood of a museum visit? Is it like going on a picnic, to school, on a shopping trip, or to church? Is money the name of the game, an inescapable fact about art today?" 

p98: "Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury under President Hoover, was embarrassed when foreign diplomats came to town and asked to be taken to the 'national gallery.' Mellon built the museum (opened in 1937) from his own collection.... The Galley's first director, David Finley, describes the museum's civilizing effects when it was first open during World War II and became a haven for soldiers visiting the city.... Free Sunday concerts, like the spacious galleries and the new practice of selling art reproductions were all aimed to promote an appreciation of beauty and quality among the ordinary men and women of the military." 

p78: "...anthropologist James Clifford, has juxtaposed the displays of totemic objects in the British Columbia Museum of Modern Art (as modernist abstract-shape sculptures) with their exhibition in Northwest Coast Indian galleries. After significant religious items were returned to tribal peoples, there were disagreements about how to display them. One group decided they should not be displayed at all. Another showed them as individual objects with commentary, whereas still another exhibited them only in a ceremonial context that recreated the potlatch ceremony in which they would traditionally be employed." 

p28: "I have argued that contemporary ugly or shocking art...has clear precedents in the Western European canon. Art includes not just works of formal beauty to be enjoyed by people with 'taste', or works with beauty and uplifting moral messages, but also works that are ugly and disturbing, with a shatteringly negative moral content. How that content is to be interpreted remains a matter for more discussion...." 

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