Na-Rae Kim selected a group of World War I posters for an Object Study Session at the Benton. Students spent time describing, analyzing, and interpreting the posters in small groups with a worksheet, which became the basis for discussion with Dr. Kim and Benton staff.  

Christopher Clark and Robert Thorson planned a visit for their American Studies class with three stations that introduced students to the links between mid-19^thcentury American art and Transcendentalism. In one station, Assistant Curator/Academic Liaison Amanda Douberley led a focused discussion of the painting Blue Ridge Wilderness(c. 1860) by William Sonntag using the Critical Lookingframework. In the second station, Dr. Clark facilitated an Object Study Sessionwith eleven prints from the Benton’s collection that picture life in rural New England. In the third station, Dr. Thorson oversaw free-hand copying of sketches by Henry David Thoreau and others.

Noga Shemer’s anthropology class visited Ancestors of the Passage, an installation by Puerto Rican-American artist Imna Arroyo that addresses the transatlantic slave trade. The group of forty students came to the museum in two shifts, with half the class watching a thirty-minute film while the other half discussed Arroyo’s work in the museum with Benton staff. The class visit examined representations of slavery, colonialism, and their legacies through a comparison of multiple media.

Alison Paul made What’s the Alternative? The Art and Outrage of the 1960s Underground Pressintegral to the first assignment in her studio art class. Students attended an in-class lecture on political cartoons and satire. Then they visited the museum for a guided discussion of What’s the Alternative?and the related exhibition, From Hogarth to Daumier: Satirical Prints in the Benton’s Collection, 1720-1848. For the assignment, students created their own political cartoons from one of three categories: health care, student loan debt, or climate change. The cartoons were critiqued by What’s the Alternative? guest curator and political cartoonist Dwayne Booth (Mr. Fish). Read more about the assignment here: https://today.uconn.edu/2018/10/challenge-political-illustration/

Pegi Shea asked her creative writing students to write ekphrastic poems inspired by original works of art displayed in the Benton. The group spent time writing in the museum as part of a self-guided class visit.

Phoebe DeVries led a discussion of the links between art and geology on a self-guided class visitwith her geoscience class. The group examined sculptures inside the galleries and on the museum grounds.

Students in Scott Wallace’s journalism course visited Face-Off: Confronting Portraiture, an exhibition of works by contemporary photographers that engage portraiture. Working in small groups, students were asked to choose two portraits and then explain to the class how each artist challenged the conventions of portraiture. The in-gallery discussion was facilitated by Wallace and Benton staff.