art_history
Art and Art History

Learning Tuscany: Art and Culture in Italy - Summer 2008

Study Abroad Office

The Learning Tuscany program exposes deserving students to art and culture first–hand. Students are given the opportunity to be ambassadors from the United States and Texas, sharing their experiences with students and citizens of Italy. Many make connections that continue to exist today, and many have cited this experience as the most important of their academic careers. Our program is one of the foremost programs of its kind in the United States, and has launched international careers of our alumni. The program has trained students from all four of our divisions (Studio Art, Art History, Design, and Visual Art Studies) and students from other majors.

In Italian culture, life and art are inseparable. Countless examples illustrate this–the still–life quality of window displays in Florence, the artisanal care taken by a Sienese stoneworker replacing part of a medieval byway, the sculpted harmony of the Tuscan countryside. We cannot experience these essential qualities of Italian life in a classroom. Only with time and careful observation can we begin to absorb the richness and rhythm of life, and art, in Italy.

This summer program focuses on the cities and landscapes of Tuscany, to consider how we and past cultures define and represent particular places. Emphasis rests upon understanding the region in which the program is located. All students live in the historic facility of Santa Chiara in the town of Castiglion Fiorentino; they take an art history course and a drawing course taught by faculty from the UT Department of Art and Art History. These courses focus on architecture, experience and memory. Group discussions and visits to other cities, such as Florence, Siena and Rome, serve to frame student experiences within a broader view of Italy. The integrated approach of the program balances carefully designed trips with work in small groups in order to explore the forces that shaped Italian city and landscapes. Students learn local history, which at Castiglion Fiorentino reaches back to Etruscan times, and live and move among the buildings of past cultures.

Readings and assignments for the program emphasize how an understanding of a particular culture is shaped by visual experience. The practice of drawing focuses this experience; it is therefore is a critical part of the program. Yet making drawings in this context is less about artistic skill than about understanding what we bring to the viewing process; through this understanding, students learn new ways of seeing.

The itinerary, program costs, and course descriptions are available now. For further information, visit Learning Tuscany (or program code 353004 via the Study Abroad Office). For more information on the program's content, itinerary, and program costs, download this document: Learning Tuscany Brochure (pdf) (download adobe reader)

Program Curriculum:

Summer 2008

ARH 374: Art and Experience in Central Itlay: Artistic Practice in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Dr. Ann Johns

Course Description: In this course, we will be examining how artists and architects in Medieval and Renaissance Italy created the monuments with which we are all familiar. When we arrive in Tuscany and see the art of central Italy, we are struck at once by a conundrum: these extraordinary objects are both pleasingly familiar and unnervingly enigmatic. How did Ghiberti create the famous bronze doors of Florence’s Baptistery? How did Michelangelo paint the Sistine chapel in such a constricted space? Why is Siena’s Piazza del Campo curved and how was it built? Seeing the objects, in context, forces us to evaluate them anew.

Through reading, discussion, drawing, and site visits, we will examine such topics as the development and usage of different artistic materials, the rise of how–to manuals, the guild and workshop systems, and the social and economic factors that contributed to the manufacture and marketing of art in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. We will discuss the rising status of both artists and architects during this period; this will be especially important for our understanding of the art of Renaissance and Baroque Rome, which was dominated by a series of strong–willed artists, including Michelangelo, Caravaggio, and Bernini. We will also discuss modern restoration and conservation techniques

Throughout this 6–week course, we will have many opportunities to examine the famous works of Tuscany and Rome, as well as lesser known works in the many nearby hill towns. Unlike classes here in Austin, few of our meetings will take place in a classroom. Instead, much of our class discussion will take place on site, in these famous art cities, and in front of the objects and buildings of interest. One of the great joys of the Learning Tuscany program is the day–to–day interaction and confrontation with art and architecture, both old and new. Thus much of our discussion of fresco technique, narrative painting and Piero della Francesca will take place in the nearby town of Arezzo, home to many of his most famous works; likewise, our understanding of tempera painting, devotional altarpieces and gothic sculpture will occur in Siena, under the gaze of the Duomo and Duccio’s Maestà.

This course will be taught in tandem with the studio art class offered by Dan Sutherland. All students will be enrolled in both classes. Our aim is twofold: we want your studies and observations about older artistic practices to enrich the art you create over the course of 6 weeks, and we hope that both your on-site and studio projects will enhance your understanding of the art of the extraordinarily beautiful region of Tuscany.

ART 319T/ART 320K/ART 379T: Studio Practice in Central Italy: Drawing/Works on Paper
Prof. Dan Sutherland

Course Description: A student participating in UT’s Learning Tuscany Program will come into direct contact with thousands of years of visible Italian Art and Culture. In this multi level drawing class the primary method of study will be in the form of structured projects and individually driven explorations generated using the rural landscape, the urban landscape and works of art and architecture as inspiration and subject matter. Our significant field trips will be to Rome, Siena, Florence and Assisi.

Students’ technical and experiential understanding of masterworks of architecture and Italian visual culture in general will change exponentially, as most of our relationships with Italian art (if we grew up in the United States) has been developed verbally and through reproductions in textbooks or slides. Our method of study in this drawing course will challenge our cultural and educational tendency to gather facts expediently. While in Italy students will learn to be sensitive to the goals, timeframe, and visual plot of a work of art or space, there by internalizing the experience.

The feature that will make this class experience distinct from ones offered at UT will be the intertwining of this studio class with that of Ann John's art history class where broad discussion will occur regarding issues effecting artistic production in Italy and its effects on the rhetorical force of works we will be experiencing.

By the end of this course, students will understand drawing to be a thoughtful daily activity that changes how we see, and how we are informed and enriched by history and place (Italy). I will be emphasizing a shift from open–ended “journalistic” exploration or volume oriented cataloging, to directed works that embody the artist’s developing expectations and fascinations with distinctly Italian influences. This summer session of drawings will help shape each student's Italian experience.

Program Faculty:

Past Programs