Looking for Clues: Ancient and Medieval Art @ Harvard

FYSEMR 64I Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Objects are essential primary sources for the study of the past. They are imbued with tales of their makers, of the societies and landscapes in which they took shape, of customs and beliefs that lent them meaning, and of routes that facilitated their dissemination. In this interdisciplinary and highly interactive first-year seminar, students will hone the art of looking through the close-up study and discussion of ancient and medieval ceramics, textiles, and metalwork from the world-class collections of the Harvard Art Museums, the Harvard Peabody Museum, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Artmaking at the Harvard Ceramics Program will further help us associate these museum objects, detached from their geographical, historical, and archaeological contexts, with imagery, feelings, and the lives of ancient and medieval craftsmen. Ceramics, textiles, and metalwork traveled across millennia along trade, warfare, diplomatic, and pilgrimage routes, transcending linguistic, religious, and cultural borders. The materials and techniques used in their creation, and the reception, appreciation, and afterlife they were accorded, illuminate the economic resources, political agendas, and cultural values of the societies that made and treasured them.

Through close looking, hands-on artmaking, and original research in Harvard’s collections, students will develop transferable analytical skills with applications across the humanities, sciences, and social sciences: the ability to read objects as documents and data, to reconstruct networks of exchange and production, and to interpret material evidence that written sources cannot supply. No prior knowledge of art history or archaeology is required, only a willingness to engage with the physical world as a site of historical inquiry. Students have gone on to pursue research in fields as varied as history of art and architecture, classics, history, comparative literature, archaeology, anthropology, economics, and environmental science, all sharpened by the encounter with a simple but radical proposition: that objects, no less than texts, are witnesses to the human past.

NOTE: Artmaking at the Harvard Ceramics Program, class visit/field work in the galleries of the MFA, and afternoon coffee/tea in the Museum café for reflections and closing session. There will be no cost to students.