Virtual Museum Experience for Critical Thinking Development: First Results from the National Gallery of Art (MOOC, US)

In recent years, the use of innovative learning strategies within museum education contexts has been considerably supported by the use of digital technologies, especially in terms of critical thinking enhancement. As underlined by several studies in the field, the aesthetic experience is particularly effective in terms of reflection skills promotion, critical interpretation and analysis, both at individual and group level, as well as personal and creative reinterpretation (Biasi, Patrizi, & Fagioli, 2020). The present paper describes a research conducted within the MOOC «Teaching Critical Thinking through Art», created by the National Gallery of Art in Washington (DC), under the scientific supervision of the Harvard Project Zero researchers, pioneers of Visual Thinking Strategies within the museum context. The paper is aimed at illustrating the results of a content analysis conducted on the forum section of the above-mentioned MOOC during the 2020 edition. In particular, 163 posts from the «See/think/wonder» activity were assessed by two human evaluators using two different Critical Thinking evaluation tools (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2001; Poce, 2017). In addition, specific analyses were carried out selected users’ writing activities in order to identify possible positive correlations between the characteristics of forum posts and the critical thinking skills solicited.

A Dentist’s Chair: For Practicality, Comfort, or Spectacle?

This essay focuses on a thirteen-inch-high reclining chair with a carved walnut frame, brass base, and emerald green velvet upholstery in the Winterthur Museum collection [1 and 2]. Created by Ira Salmon of Boston circa 1866, the chair is a patent model and part of Salmon’s efforts to win a professional reputation as a dentist early in his career. This essay documents the transformation of dentistry in America from an itinerant practice in the early republic to a professionalized career in the mid-nineteenth century. It offers evidence of how the material world of dentists changed when tools of the profession became standardized and mass produced. Developing technologies facilitated reclining chairs suited for newfangled operative techniques. The essay also focuses on a period that anticipates the development of germ theory in the early twentieth century and the sterilization of the dentist’s office. In this mid-nineteenth century moment, the aesthetics of dentist offices, and their chairs’ designs, bridge a divide between the traditional values associated with dentists and those ascribed to dentists today. The patent model demonstrates Salmon’s desire to appeal to his clients’ interest by capturing the dramatic potential of a dentist’s visit while satisfying their desire for comfort and expectation of skilful technique. Olivia Armandroff is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Art History at the University of Southern California. She works on early- to mid-twentieth-century American art. She holds a B.A. from Yale University in History and the History of Art where she wrote and later published a senior thesis on how the early-twentieth-century phenomenon for individualized bookplates. Before coming to USC, she was the John Wilmerding Intern for American Art at the National Gallery of Art and then earned an M.A. in American Material Culture from the Winterthur Program where her master’s thesis was dedicated to the early twentieth-century, New York salon of Muriel Draper. Olivia has curated exhibitions at the Yale University Art Gallery, Sterling Memorial Library, the Delaware Art Museum, and the American Swedish Historical Museum and has contributed to exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art, the Blanton Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Copyright Management by Contemporary Art Exhibition Institutions in Poland: Case Study of the Zachęta National Gallery of Art

The mission of cultural institutions is the expression of sustainable development, which assumes a specific social order based on respect for the right of access to culture and care for the common good which is cultural heritage, in order to preserve it for future generations. To best implement its social mission, the essence of museum activities is not only collecting resources but also promoting the collection. In addition, promotion in accordance with the principle of openness and the conviction that cultural heritage is a common good, which is why it should be available to the widest possible public. Copyright in artworks often stands in the way of implementing an open approach to the dissemination of collections. Contemporary museums and galleries of art are in a special situation; their collections are not yet in the public domain, and so they cannot be freely distributed. The undertaken research problem explores how cultural institutions in Poland manage the copyright of collections in order to carry out their mission in a sustainable way. In this context, copyright is treated as an important intangible resource of a cultural institution. The case study was used as the research strategy in order to understand the subject. Activities implemented at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw were described.

Review of: Thomas Crow,RESTORATION: THE FALL OF NAPOLEON IN THE COURSE OF EUROPEAN ART, 1812–1820, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018, The A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Bollingen Series XXXV: vol. 64, 202 pages, 171 illustrations.

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