This post is not about an artistic moment, function, or artist but about their contribution to the youth and the importance of art history in a high school and college curriculum. As you begin to take art history courses, you begin to gain knowledge of the political, cultural , and economic context of the time the piece was created and sold. Just imagine how much knowledge you gain from knowing the background of one single artwork.
This helps students understand the why’s of today and how humanity has evolved, knowing where you come from and the roots of things are key for being a cultivated and exquisite person. This helps you analyze and see the world in a new light, to be introspective and extrospective. See the world from one’s point of view and understand and learn to see it outside our minds and in someone else’s view. I know this sounds as a skill that you can know or learn with out needing the specific subject of art history in your curriculum, but the subject develops a mindset that we create with all the background knowledge that is provided to us, you can develop a political stance to changing your artistic point of view.
Art history not only allows you to create a new mindset toward social, political, and economic issues, but teaches you to appreciate history in the right way. By right way I mean in the context in which it is supposed to be appreciated, for example, A professor at Brown University, taught Roman Art, and he took the students to chapels where they could appreciate the art pieces, these pieces are to be appreciated in the somber light of these chapels, how they were supposed to be in the past when they were created and sold, the chapel allowed you to add coins to turn on the light, but none of his students did because they knew better that that type of art should be appreciated in the darkness, just as it was in its time.
This is a quality that must be preserved and passed on through generations, but if the amount of students taking this subject subsides, since most are being pushed into STEM fields given the funding and scholarships available by Republican entities, then there is not going to be anyone that translates and passes on this beautiful knowledge that is the history of art and everything that has influenced its making, its location, and style.
Link:
Charney, Noah. “The Art of Learning: Why Art History Might Be the Most Important Subject You Could Study Today.” Salon, Salon.com, 16 Jan. 2017, www.salon.com/2017/01/15/the-art-of-learning-why-art-history-might-be-the-most-important-subject-you-could-study-today/.