Blog Post # 1: Please respond to the following prompt by 5:00 pm on Friday, September 4

Hi everyone! Like Anna, my interest in majoring in the History of Art started in my Emily Balch Seminar titled Making Memory Matter. This class turned my initial fears about studying art history (how it may be superficial or removed from current issues) completely upside down. I loved the way this class connected art with the concepts of public space and collective memory. My sophomore year, I took a class at Haverford titled The Sociology of Art, which circled around the question “Who creates the creators?” and again I was really interested in the very complicated, but powerful, concept that curators, gallerists, art dealers and buyers, among many other art related groups, have this ability to cement certain artists, and their ideas, into culture. Also in my sophomore year, I took Art and Climate Change at Swarthmore and was particularly interested in artists, or art collectives, that produced eco-art outside the walls of galleries and museums. While I was abroad in Copenhagen, I essentially took a break from art history related classes. I took a class called Polar Biology, I learned about whales and seals, traveled into the Arctic circle, went fishing, but also learned from my professor that there is a large need for people from art/humanities backgrounds to be working with the scientists that are researching climate change. I grew even more interested in pursuing a connection between the environment and art with my classes in the 360 program I took last semester titled Material Worlds. I enjoyed how the research was grounded in a connection to the earth and global practices of making. I don't have any specific ideas for my thesis, but I'd like to continue thinking about materials, or possibly art/design in public spaces. With an Environmental Studies minor, I am of course interested in seeing how I can connect my environmental passions with my art history thesis.