Just discovered this delightful site and thought it would be of use to you and your students:
Smarthistory.
Dissatisfied with your textbook? So were two university art history professors, Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker. They were unhappy with the large, expensive art history textbooks they had been assigning their students -- the physical textbooks were "difficult for many students, contain too many images, and just are not particularly engaging," and the publisher-created digital supplements were "woefully uncreative" (Harris and Zucker).
So, they created Smarthistory to replace their art textbooks -- it's a multi-media art history survey, focused primarily on Western civilization.
You can scroll through a variety of works emblematic of various time periods or artistic movements:
Conversations, not lectures
Audio files are included for every work, but one remarkable innovation is that Harris and Zucker chose conversations, rather than lectures.
Together, the two of them simply have a spontaneous conversation about each piece, and their conversations are fun -- they're full of little mysteries and hidden information about each piece, like in
this conversation -- can you tell which angel Leonardo da Vinci painted, and which was painted by his elder and teacher, Verrochio?
(click on the painting to find out)
Why conversations?
In their opinion, lectures are too boring. In contrast, in their spontaneous conversations, "we are not afraid to disagree with each other or art history orthodoxy. We have found that the unpredictable nature of discussion is far more compelling to students, museum visitors and other informal learners than a monologue."
Open source: it's free, and you can contribute, too
Harris and Zucker recently teamed up with Khan Academy, because both of them share the same mission -- to get free, high quality resources out to teachers, and to encourage others to add to their content.
So you, and potentially your students, could contribute, too -- just pick a piece of art, and discuss it in regard to its historical or art history context.
Click below to see the "
Create your own content" page:
Harris, Beth, and Steven Zucker. "About Smarthistory." Smarthistory. Khan Academy, Oct. 2011. Web. 03 Dec. 2012.
