Assignment Details HUMA-1301.990: Intro to Humanities I

Instructions 

Museum Visit Report (Response) 

Due: January 3 (by 11:59pm)
The museum visit is meant to engage personally with works of art and to appreciate them as artifacts of the cultures responsible for their production. As we have discussed in class, works of art (painting, sculpture, architecture) reflect the culture of a particular time and place. For this assignment, you will attend an art museum of your choice. You will then select TWO works that you find interesting (they can be any combination of painting, sculpture, etc.). Once you have selected the works you would like to use in your response, you will then evaluate the works as products of their culture. To this end, the question that you need to address is:

 
What statement, if any, does the work make concerning the culture of which it is a product?
(ex: what does the Pantheon in Rome say about Roman civilization?)

To this end, you will need to gather as much information as possible regarding the background of the works you have selected. When were the works created? Who created them? What are/were the nationalities of the artists? Where did they work? How does the works compare to other works created at roughly the same time and in roughly the same place? These questions are certainly not the only questions you can raise; however, to get a clearer idea of the cultural background of a work, these questions will help to focus your response. You do not need to linger on the answers to these questions. Instead, incorporate what you find into the response you write.

Outside of these requirements, you have a degree of freedom regarding which museum you visit, as well as the works of art that you decide to write about. You can write about works of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, the medieval world, the Renaissance, and you can also address works from other centuries and civilizations. You do not need to limit yourselves to what is covered in the course overall, or what has been covered up to the point that you make your museum visit.

 
Your two responses must be a total of at least 2 pages in length. To do as well as possible, I would strongly recommend that you split your time as evenly as possible between the two responses, so that they are of a similar length and discuss their works in similar levels of depth. Make sure to double space your responses, so that they are more readable.
You must submit your assignment on Canvas before the posted deadline.