Why Art History?
Three formative experiences led me to my vocation. The first happened in the fourth grade. I remember coming into the classroom after recess, sitting in the cool and darkened room, and becoming mesmerized before a filmstrip detailing the dramatic disintegration of Leonardo’s Last Supper fresco (and accompanied by appropriately intense music). I was enchanted by the high drama of the Renaissance art world. The summer after, my beloved teacher Miss Doxey sent me a postcard from her trip to Athens. I treasured that photo of the Parthenon for years and still view the Acropolis as my professional Mecca. In a tenth-grade humanities class, I remember doing a report on Vincent Van Gogh. We made a “Studio of the South” out of an old refrigerator box covered in yellow butcher paper. I painted a copy of his Crows Over Wheatfield and made ear-shaped sugar cookies to pass out to my classmates (gross, I know). And finally, on my trip up to college, my mother and I drove to the LACMA to see a traveling show of the Annenberg collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. When we were told that the show was sold out for the rest of the day, I was devastated. However, I was attended by the guardian angels of art history that day, and a well-heeled woman overheard our discussion with the ticket agent and offered us her two tickets. I was positively giddy as I walked through that exhibition and saw masterpiece after masterpiece of paintings I had only seen in books: Monet’s fields, Degas’s dancers, Van Gogh’s flowers, and Cézanne’s mountains. I knew from that moment forward that I had found my bliss.
Conversation topic: What drew you to art history?
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A really dedicated, enthusiastic high school AP Art History teacher. Art history was a wedding of all of my favorite things. Because of her encouragements and involvement with the Junior Art Guild at the Springville Museum of Art (smofa.org) I decided at fifteen what I wanted to be – an art historian!
Two years ago I sat in Humanities 202 as a print journalist major. I was taking the class to fulfill a GE credit. From day one I was completely absorbed and blissfully happy to study. On this particular class we were talking about Duchamp’s Fountain and she told her story of being converted from a print journalism major to a humanities major because of this sculpture. I said THAT’S ME! But forget humanities! Let’s go straight to the good stuff. I then declared myself as an art history major.
It was a free screensaver I downloaded that included Vermeer’s “The Girl With a Pearl Earring.” Each time that painting popped up on my screen, I just stared. Since the screensaver was so fleeting, I researched the painting so I could learn and stare some more. Then, I became mesmerized by the mystery of Vermeer. It wasn’t long before I took a Humanities 202 class, became mesmerized with the stories of art, and became an Art History major!
It was YOU–my very first art history professor eight years ago–with a love for art so contagious, that I became smitten.
Well, in 5th grade I dressed up like van Gogh and did a report for my class. I’m pretty sure I bandaged my ear for it.
When I was 16 my family went to New York on vacation and I didn’t ever want to leave the Met, and I cried when I found out we couldn’t visit the MoMA because it was being re-modeled.
My senior year of high school I had the most passionate, wonderful AP Art History teacher. She would say things like, “I am convinced that these are the most sensitive lips in all of ancient sculpture.” (In reference to a Head of an Akkadian Ruler.) I loved her.
Then, my freshman year at BYU, I was sitting in a Humanities class, thinking I wanted to be a Humanities major, when I realized I got impatient when we talked about poetry and ballet and theater. I just wanted the art!
A study abroad semester in Paris with Dr. Jon Green. We had passes to the three major museums and could go whenever we wanted and I spent hours upon hours within the Louvre in particular. I came home and switched my major two semesters later (nursing) because I couldn’t get art out of my head.
I remember watching Sister Wendy in my art classes in junior high and loving the way that she would describe and explain things. I loved how each work of art became so much more meaningful after just a few minutes of discussion. I watched Lust for Life around that time and fell in love with Van Gogh. I personally wanted to be an artist for a long time, too, and still dabble with painting and sculpture. The turning point was Deborah Fischer’s phenomenal Humanities 202 class. At the time I was studying psychology, and I suddenly realized that analyzing culture through its creations was exactly the brand of psychology I was looking for. I couldn’t get enough of the art we studied in that class! So after declaring myself a Humanites major with an art history emphasis, I eventually switched over to just art history to have a better shot at getting into grad school. So glad I did!
I have always loved art–I painted in high school–and history was one of my best subjects. Some people had suggested art history, but I fought against it, thinking it a lesser field. However, after coming to college and sitting through my Humanities classes and visiting museums I knew art history was for me. Seeing art and learning about it always gave me something more and I love every bit of it.
My grandma would always take me to Museums as a child. I remember falling in love with Monet and Leonardo from the great times that we had an the art books she would buy me.
I became fully converted by an AP Art History class in High School. It made me realize that taking this class changed every single one of my classmate’s perspectives on life. I knew then that I also wanted to help people see life through new eyes.
I think it’s just been in my blood! My family lived overseas when I was very young and my parents loved to take us around to museums, cathedrals, castles, great estates. I loved the visual impact of art and architecture, but I also loved the history of it and how the artifacts and images made history live in my imagination. Despite that, I still tried all sorts of other “majors” during my first year at college–English, History, Accounting, but couldn’t get into them. So I signed up for Mark J’s Renaissance and Baroque Architecture class on a whim and just felt right at home
I fell in love with art history for a couple reasons. As a child my brother would come home from school everyday and turn on the history channel. His love for history intrigued me and enveloped my attention to the past. The art side of it I believe was instilled in me from when I was young. I was always creating, painting or drawing something and my psyche always gravitated to anything concerned with the essence of beauty or creativity. Now, having great teachers who are enthused by the same things helped me to grasp art history in a whole other realm. I love it!!!
A best friend who was an art major, an insatiable urge to travel, and just being a really visual learner. I was an English major and got frustrated because I wanted to see all the things and people in my books. So, I started to study art and got swept away.
In fifth grade I first learned about ancient Egypt and became obsessed, I devoured every book I could find on the subject. I think that was the beginning. Then I got to go to Paris, Rome, and France the summer before I started high school, and it was Amazing. But it was in Mark Johnson’s 201 class that I realized it: many of my classmates nodded off every day, but I was always leaning forward in my seat, listening intently, fascinated by everything. Then 202 with you sealed the deal.
My mom used to teach special art history course at elementary schools and I would go with her. She has always made sure I was exposed to culture in all forms, but my own personal love of drawing and painting lead to favor the visual arts. Coupled with my natural love of history, ART + HISTORY = Perfection.
When my husband and I first started dating back in hgh school, he took me to the Portland Art Museum which has a sizeable modern art collection. Having taken AP Art History, he knew a thing or two and I knew nothing. At one point, we came across this minimalist piece called “Black Box”. It was just a twelve inch square black cube sitting on a pedestal.
I turned to him and asked, “Why?”
He asked, “Why not?”
“But, I could have made that.”
“But you didn’t.”
I don’t know why, but that was a pivotal moment for me. I was intrigued, and once I started, I couldn’t stop.
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