Fall 2022
Manet and Modernism: Challenging Cultural Limits
Mary Crawford-Volk PhD
French painter douard Manet (1832-1883) now enjoys sustained admiration as a pioneer modernist. During his Paris career, however, he was harshly and continually criticized for making and exhibiting paintings that defied conventional expectations in technique, subject matter, scale, and circumstances of display. Beleaguered but resolute, he persisted in creating a body of work that decisively transformed the art of painting. This course closely examines how he did this. Focusing on major works and the context of their creation, it includes Manet's relations with friends, critics, and colleagues, and also looks at his rich posthumous legacy, from impressionism to post-impressionism to Pablo Picasso.
Prerequisites: An introductory art history course and/or a course in nineteenth-century European art.
Spring 2023
Evolution of the American City: Civic Aspirations and Urban Form
Alex Krieger MCPUD, Professor in Practice of Urban Design, Emeritus, Harvard Graduate School of Design - Benjamin B. Bolger DDes, Consultant, Bolger Strategic
The course is an interpretative look at the characteristic patterns of settlement and attitudes towards cities and urban life that are identified with American urbanization. The course seeks to foster a critical understanding of the national ideals, cultural aspirations, governance, planning policies, and design actions that have influenced American urbanization. The course chronicles an ongoing search for alternative ways to form communities, evident in both utopian and pragmatic efforts to re-conceive of how and in what shape cities and urban regions should grow. This proceeded originally in concert with a body of ideals that became fundamental to the European enlightenment and soon after the explosion of urban growth brought about by the industrial revolution. Just being built, rather than like European cities needing to adapt, with considerable difficulty, to the cultural, political, and technological transformations of the seventeenth through twentieth centuries, American cities heralded the arrival of the modern world. This is key to their understanding and appreciation. The course addresses the idea of American society being "a volatile mixture of hopeful good and curable bad," as Michael Kammen put it. Thus, we weigh those soaring American aspirations related to liberty, equality, justice, and the desire to perfect the world, against dystopian aspects of American history: the near-total destruction of Indigenous cultures, the horrors of slavery and systemic racism, the conceits of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism, the corporate and political restraints on economic parity, and the despoiling of the environment in the name of progress. The course seeks comparisons and contrasts between periods of rapid urban growth across American history and the even more rapid urbanization currently taking place in many regions of the world. American cities grew largely in emulation of and in contrast to their much older European counterparts, as today many cities globally seek inspiration from and attempt to improve upon the American urban experience.
Prerequisites: Some familiarity with American history.
Spring 2023
Understanding Architecture
Mark R. Johnson MArch, Lecturer in Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design
How does one understand a work of architecture? We can look to the humanities to help answer this question. For example, identifying a poem's characteristics its form, rhyme, meter, imagery and so forth can enrich one's understanding of the poet's artistic intent and the meaning ascribed to the work today. What are the analogous methods for understanding a work of architecture? Using the finest examples of American architecture located on the Harvard campus, students are asked to analyze buildings using a rigorous conceptual framework and then synthesize their findings according to how contemporary observers may ascribe meaning to the built work.
Spring 2023
Reinventing the Boston Museum of Fine Arts: The Twentieth Century and Today
Mary Crawford-Volk PhD
Art museums have become central institutions in American culture and large city museums like Boston's Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) play complex roles in contemporary life. Using the MFA as a case study of this larger phenomenon, the course examines the twentieth-century development of the museum as a treasure-house of masterpieces, and then addresses how it has dealt with a range of issues that bear on its continuing vitality today. These include ethical questions about object provenances, procedures for new acquisitions, commercial sources of revenue, appropriate exhibition content, and programming for diverse audiences. Students are encouraged to address these issues in their research papers. At least one field trip to the museum is planned, to include discussion with one or more staff members.