New Student Orientation
To engage new students enrolled in the CMA/CWRU Joint Program in Art History, and to better assist the art history faculty in enhancing the students’ research and problem-solving skills applicable to the field of art history, the Ingalls Library reference staff implemented a problem-based learning approach to the new student orientation.
What is problem-based learning?
In the problem-based approach, complex, real-world problems are used to motivate students to identify and research the concepts and principles they need to know to work through those problems. Students work in small learning teams, bringing together collective skill and acquiring, communicating, and integrating information. The problem-based learning approach for new student orientation is used to realize the following:
- Introduce new students to the resources available in the Ingalls Library
- Focus on research methodologies in art history
- Assign students to a reference librarian who will be his/her "point of contact" for research assistance throughout their tenure in the Joint Program
- Question 1
On the 10th of March, 1914, suffragette Mary Richardson walked into the National Gallery, London, and slashed Diego Velázquez's painting The Toilet of Venus (1647–51), a recent and popular acquisition known as "The Rokeby Venus." If you were to write a gallery card or wall label about this painting, subsequently repaired and returned to display, what aspects of its artistic and physical history would you stress?
- Question 2
In Rembrandt van Rijn painting connoisseurship, many different terms are used to suggest how closely an artist was linked to the Rembrandt workshop. The attached “Glossary of Terms” from the Sotheby’s New York “Old Master Paintings & Sculpture" sale held on January 29–30, 2009 helps us understand the following terms:
- Rembrandt workshop
- Rembrandt circle
- Rembrandt follower
- Rembrandt copyist
Using these terms, how would we find out which artists were documented to have worked in Rembrandt’s workshop in Amsterdam?
- Question 3
- Question 4
When was Goya's Self-Portrait with a Candle Hat, in the Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, first identified as a candle hat? Who is credited with providing this insight?
- Question 5
How many members of the Abstract Expressionists studied with Hans Hofmann? How many were members of the American Abstract Artists Group? Who were they?