bmc.HART.B398.001.F26: Blog Post 1 - Charlotte Roberts

My experience with art history courses has been a bit all over the place. I started out taking three medieval/byzantine focused courses in my first two years. I loved it but ultimately, I didn’t feel like it was my niche. Since then I’ve been jumping around a bunch of areas. I think the culminating projects I have been most proud of are an exhibition plan that I worked on for Professor Scott’s Exhibiting Africa course which consisted of African and African American textiles, and a catalog essay I wrote for the exhibition my class helped with in Professor McKee’s Caribbean art course. In the catalog essay I was able to bring in analysis of a short story to supplement the art, which was really gratifying since I am minoring in English. The presence of narrative is really important to me, and is something I want to hold onto. For this reason I’m excited about Professor Feliz’s Identification in Cinema course this semester. Other stand-out courses have been Survey of 19th century art when it was taught by Professor McKee, and Professor Feliz's intro to contemporary art course which helped me understand Andy Warhol for the first time. Outside of an academic setting I am a huge fan of historic house museums and have traveled around the east coast visiting them with my mom. I love the way that they allow visitors to be told a story while enveloped in the story’s real setting–though that story is always one of exorbitant wealth and hidden labor that I want to be critical of. So maybe a gilded age decorative arts thesis is in my future. I also love fashion exhibitions and textiles. I saw an exhibition at MOMA a year ago called Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction and am constantly thinking about what I saw there. I am definitely interested in labor as it relates to art, textiles, interiors, and fashion, though I haven’t been able to take a class completely focused in these areas which makes me intimidated by the gaps in my knowledge.