The Colby College Museum of Art and the Bowdoin College Museum of Art co-organize two workshops a year on object-based pedagogy for faculty.
Art and Nature: Environment, Ecocriticism, and the History of Science
Fall 2015 – In this workshop, we examined interdisciplinary strategies for discussing art and nature in the Museum with faculty participants hailing from a wide range of departments in the sciences and humanities. This workshop featured keynote speaker Karl Kusserow, John Wilmerding Curator of American Art from the Princeton Art Museum, who gave us a nice preview of the upcoming exhibition “Nature’s Nation: American Art and Environment,” a major traveling exhibition broadly reinterpreting American art through the lens of eco-criticism. Materials online here.
Talking through Artworks: Teaching Speech and Oral Presentation in the Museum
Spring 2016 – This 1-day workshop examined oral communication in object-based learning. Participants discussed rhetorical strategies to improve student presentations, class discussions, and feedback on student’s rhetorical skills. Workshop sessions included designing rubrics for assessment of oral presentation, modeling visual literacy in oral presentation, scaffolding assignments, and integrating writing and close looking to encourage class discussion. Materials online here.