Presidential Lectureship on Art kicks off with James Elkins
Janel Shoun |
The Presidential Lectureship for Art and Art History made an impressive launch Oct. 9 with James Elkins, professor in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the Art Institute of Chicago, and a very popular author within the art world.
“Not only is he highly respected among his peers in the art world,” said Laura Lake Smith, Lipscomb University Art Department Chair, “but his writing speaks to the general public as well. His books cover a range of subjects such as our personal and emotional reaction to art as well as how we see, know and understand art.”
“The goal (of the lectureship) is to bring prominent art historians and practicing artists to the Nashville community to serve as a catalyst for further growth and discussion among our students,” said Provost Craig Bledsoe.
Over 150 people attended the first lecture by Elkins, held in the Shamblin Theatre.
“After the lecture, I had many calls and notes too that it went off beautifully and that they expect to see more great things from our department.” noted Smith.
Elkins spoke on “What is Visual Literacy?” based on his upcoming book describing a project he conducted at a university in Cork, Ireland. Elkins wanted to, as he says “understand how visual art is understood and talked about.”
To explore a recent train of thought that our culture has become a “visual culture,” rather that a verbal culture, so we should be teaching students to become “visually literate,” Elkins called on faculty members and students from every discipline at the university to submit all types of images for a “visual image” exhibit. He received all types of images from restorative dentistry color slides to historic photographs, from scientific simulations to ancient manuscripts.
His thesis was that to become visually literate, one has to study images from other fields beyond art and the humanities.
“It makes the rest of my faculty and me think about how we teach art, the history of images, the way in which we study and analyze and interpret the visual,” Smith said of Elkin’s experiment in Ireland.
Elkins’ experiences highlighted some limits of the “visual literacy” concept, such as he found that the least visual departments were in the arts and humanities; there can be abuses of images, such as using them for political purpose; and when looking at a microscopic (or even atomic) image from the sciences “One has to wonder if we are still looking at a picture if we are looking at something that tiny” said Elkins.
The next speaker in the Presidential Lectureship for Art and Art History is Kimberly Elam, Professor of Graphic Design from the Ringling School of Art and Design and author of five books on visual communication.