Teaching Beyond the Curriculum

Abstract

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This paper describes an adaptation for studio art instruction of Christina J. Hodge’s 2018 proposal for anthropological instruction in museum collections, called ‘Decolonizing Collections-Based Learning: Experiential Observation as Interdisciplinary Framework for Object Study’. The adaption of Hodge’s framework is carried out in an advanced printmaking course taught at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Canada, using a teaching collection of historical prints stewarded by the Library Special Collections + Archives. Hodge described material literacy as ‘the ability to approach material culture as a generative source of meaning making’, and claims that a critical and creative ‘materialogical imagination’ is a crucial 21st-century skill. Given the centrality of materials and processes to artistic practice, artists are particularly well situated to develop a powerful materialogical imagination. This paper describes the pedagogical methods used and the tools developed to guide printmaking students through the experiential observation and synesthetic analysis of collection-objects, followed by text-based secondary source research. The collections experience and secondary source research was conducted in small groups and the work is brought home with the opportunity to respond in the studio to the collection-based print. In this way, the coursework tested whether a multisensory engagement with an object could develop material literacy and make a historical collection a place from which to generate new meaning-making for contemporary studio practices.