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Inside
the Blue Book: March
2000 History
of Art 403b Professional connoisseurs of art have it rough. Not only do they have to know what they like, they also have to be able to separate the artistic wheat from the chaff as well as tell an original from a fake. Since 1983, Theresa Fairbanks-Harris, who heads the conservation laboratory at the Center for British Art ("Details," Mar. 1999), has offered students the opportunity to develop both their powers of discernment and familiarity with the techniques involved in properly conserving prints, paintings, sculpture, rare books, and the like. Fairbanks-Harris, who this semester shares the teaching duties with Mark Aronson and Patricia Garland, conservators at the Art Gallery, explains that the course actually began in the School of Art. "In the Renaissance, artists would serve a lengthy apprenticeship to learn the craft of making art -- and making it last," she notes. "We wanted to teach art students the techniques which ensured that their creations would be around for awhile." Initially, the course dealt with the permanence and durability of artistic materials and proper matting and framing techniques. In its present guise, however, the history of art offering is a seminar geared towards upper-level undergraduates and graduate students whose career track is more likely to involve them in the evaluation, purchase, and protection of art than in its production. "We give them the vocabulary and exposure to modern scientific tools they need to analyze artwork from a technical perspective," says Mark Aronson, "and then we send them into the galleries to look directly at how artists manipulated their materials and at what time has done to the art." The instructors also make sure that their students come away with an appreciation of the process as well as the final product. The course always features a field trip to a studio where the budding connoisseurs have watched everything from copperplate printing to parchment making. Says Fairbanks-Harris, "You can't really understand art until you've seen it being made." |
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Yale
Alumni Magazine, PO Box 1905, New Haven, CT 06509-1905. USA.
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