Critical Looking Workshop
Sharpen observation skills, practice empathy, and engage in critical thinking at The Benton. This 50-minute workshop shows students how to tap their powers of observation and investigate a work of art through close looking and discussion. Offered in the museum and online (synchronous). The workshop is led by Benton Education staff. Use the Request Form to reserve your workshop early, as space is limited.
The Benton’s Critical Looking workshop helps students in UNIV 1820 Exploring STEM Research 101 achieve their learning goals by pausing to review a scenario from multiple perspectives with their peers. As students are learning the foundation of becoming an undergraduate researcher, being curious and skeptical about seminal research articles and their own data findings are essential skills to begin to hone. Attending the Critical Looking workshop provides students a terrific exercise to apply these skillsets so then they can also have a better understanding of how to approach, critically think, and communicate about their own projects and mature into innovative investigators.
Renée M. Trueman, Ph.D., M.S., Center for Access and Postsecondary Success (CAPS) and Program Coordinator, McNair Scholars Program
UNIV 1784 is a freshman seminar for honors students of diverse academic interests. The course encourages students to connect their major with sensory perception (mostly taste and smell) in unique and creative ways through observations, thinking, reflection, reading scientific literature, and an interdisciplinary group project.
The workshop exposes students to the museum and to a single piece of art. This experience encourages students to slow their minds, to focus, think, to be creative in their analysis, and to connect with their interdisciplinary group from class.
Valerie Duffy, Ph.D. R.D., Professor, Department of Allied Health Science
The Critical Looking experience at The Benton delivered unexpected positive feedback from my FYE (First Year Experience) class in Fall of 2022. There were students that were grateful for the fact that it was a ‘field trip’ and brought them to a space on campus they had never been to before. The facilitation technique created the “cool kind” of silence, that led to reflection and consideration by my students. I was impressed with their active listening and curious comments about the artistic goals of the photographer.
Juliet Kapsis, Program Coordinator, University Events & Conference Services
Engaging with art invites habits of mind that writing requires—curiosity, persistence, open-mindedness, and more. The critical looking activity challenges writing students to dwell longer than they may be used to doing with a text. They practice observing, noticing, and counting rather than driving toward a conclusion. It invites them to sense their own experience in the encounter. After a visit to the Benton, students share divergent ways they found into, or away from, the art. The facilitators welcome students into a space that they may not otherwise have thought of as "theirs." I hope that transfers into thinking about writing as more than reconstituting what other people think about something.
Tina Huey, Ph.D., Associate Director, Faculty Development, Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and Adjunct Faculty, Department of English
