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Art at the Heart of the College: Teaching and Learning at the Mead
Enjoy this unique opportunity to see all that is new at Amherst’s active art museum. Hone your skills in art appreciation while experiencing the latest approaches to visual literacy. Learn how faculty, students, and museum staff are exploring the diverse collections of the Mead in innovative ways, while making fascinating discoveries on an almost daily basis. Join the excitement with professors, curators, and students through lively presentations, engaging conversations, and behind-the-scenes encounters with works of art.
Assigned Readings
- Maxwell L. Anderson, The Quality Instinct: Seeing Art Through a Museum Director’s Eye, Press of the American Association of Museums, 2012.
- Elizabeth E. Barker, Maggie Dethloff, Randall Griffey, Bettina Jungen, Rick López, Evan Maurer, Samuel Morse, Pamela Russell, et al., Mead Art Museum at Amherst College Collection Guide, Amherst College Press 2011
- Carol Duncan, “Art Museums and Galleries,” in The Oxford History of Western Art, compiled by Martin Kemp, pp. 404-409, Oxford 2000
Recommended Readings
Copies available for purchase in bookstores (click the underlined passages below to order on-line)
- Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics, Routledge 1995
- John Berger, Ways of Seeing, Penguin 1990
- Rika Burnham and Elliott Kai-Kee, Teaching in the Art Museum: Interpretation as Experience, Getty 2011
- James Cuno, editor, Whose Muse? Art Museums and the Public Trust, Princeton 2003
- Francis Haskell, The Ephemeral Museum: Old Master Paintings and the Rise of the Art Exhibition, Yale 2000
- Stefanie Jandl and Mark Gold, eds., A Handbook for Academic Museums: Beyond Exhibitions and Education, MuseumsEtc 2012 [July]
- Suzanne Keene, Fragments of the World: Uses of Museum Collections, Taylor and Francis 2005
- Charles Morgan, The Development of The Art Collection of Amherst College,1821–1971, Amherst 1972, available as an eBook for the Kindle reader and in hardcopy from the museum's bookshop by calling Ms. Karen Cardinal, tel. 413-542-2551.
- David Perkins, The Intelligent Eye: Learning to Think by Looking at Art, Getty 1994
- Julian Spaulding, The Poetic Museum: Reviving Historic Collections (especially Chapters 5–7), Prestel 2002