hello-

i was asking about this topic some months ago in preparing a proposal for
a class on writing about art through the school's expository writing
program.  by the way, belated thanks to all who contributed!  i am now
teaching the class, and it's working fairly well.  the way it turned out
is that i utilized some of the exercises and essay prompts already in
place, and added some stuff, and limited other stuff to being about
artworks, so the semester sequence goes like this (much simplified of
course):  writing about unmediated looking, from a personal point of view;
evaluating how well others' theoretical perspectives work (reading some
seminal art history texts), interpreting from formal qualities and
context, and finally, which i am still tinkering with, writing about a
group of works and the meaning of the group beyond the meaning of the
individual works.  this is a course based on a lot of stuff the epxository
writing program here already works on, so it's definitely tailored to some
of that, but i can tell you that the unified subject matter may allow you
to delve more deeply into skills with looking, thinking, and writing.
please email me if you want some more info on this, and i know others on
the list have lots of good stuff to say as well.

good luck!

meryl zwanger




On Mon, 1 Feb 1999, Pamela Hill wrote:

> Hello, all!  Apologies for any repetition due to cross-posting!
>
> I've just returned for a meeting with the coordinator of our
> university's English Composition program, who wants to coordinate her
> program with the Weatherspoon Art Gallery and encourage more of her
> teaching assistants to use the museum as a resource in teaching
> Freshman Composition courses.
>
> In the past, several TA's have brought their classes to the Gallery for
> tours or looking exercises so they could write descriptive papers
> based on a work in the Gallery.  This is great, but we want to go
> beyond description to enable English instructors to use the gallery in
> different ways.  Some of our ideas include a sequential program in
> which students move from writing description to writing about the
> "argument" that a particular work of art presents, or perhaps thematic
> tours in which students look at, discuss, and write about works of art
> that relate to the theme of their composition class (themes include
> Gender Identity, Media Culture, Civil Rights, etc.)
>
> Do any of you (in museums of any discipline) have writing programs for
> university English Composition students in place? What kinds of
> programs do you do?  Do you have advice on particular successes or
> pitfalls in a program like this?
>
> As always, thank you in advance for your help!
>
> Pam Hill
> Curator of Education
> Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
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>