The Art of Looking

This installation is related to a graduate seminar in which students will help design a new “Framework Course” for undergraduates in the humanities. The course is organized around technologies of visual experience—tools, materials, and procedures that have altered practices of looking throughout history. Objects related to five technologies explored in the seminar are on display: the camera obscura, the Claude glass, the color chart, the wood engraving, and the carte-de-visite photograph. Students will also focus on porcelain, ornament, and easel painting by looking at objects on display elsewhere in the museum. The seminar is taught by Robin Kelsey, Shirley Carter Burden Professor of Photography; and Jennifer Roberts, Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University.

Teaching gallery installations are mounted in conjunction with Harvard University undergraduate and graduate courses and feature selected objects from the Harvard Art Museums collections. Coordinated by Amy Brauer, Diane Heath Beever Curator of the Collection, Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art, Harvard Art Museums.