One Weird Trick: Teaching with Objects
With fall in the air and classes back in full swing at MCAD, we resume our One Weird Trick video series. This time around we have tapped the immense knowledge and experience of Jessica Dandona, art history instructor at MCAD. Dr. Dandona “shakes up” her course by bringing in tangible artifacts for students to touch and feel, adding an important component on top of traditional art-history learning.
Here’s the video:
Dr. Dandona has assembled what she terms the Teaching Materials Collection—consisting of such objects as historic pigments, a Daguerreotype, textiles, and even a replica of the Venus de Willendorf.
What’s key with the Collection, Dr. Dandona points out, is that students get to connect with a time in history and with the artists who created the works they’re studying in a more substantial way than simply looking at images or listening to a lecture. In the end, it allows them to bridge a divide between an abstract presentation of the works and a grounded, material understanding of them.
