A Trip to the Hood: European Art in the Age of Revolution

This fall, students from Professor Katie Hornstein's class, European Art in the Age of Revolution (1750–1850), stepped into the Hood Museum's Bernstein Center for a change of pace in learning. In the study center, the edges of the room were lined with late 18th- and early 19th-century European objects. While many expected a traditional museum tour, they were invited, instead, to slow down and look.

This trip was part of Hornstein's course, which explores how visual arts were transformed between 1750 and 1850 amid dramatic social, political, and cultural upheavals, with close attention to the connection between artists and societal change.
From the Hood's collection of over 65,000 objects, Hornstein selected a range of oil paintings, prints, and sculptures that fell within the chronological and geographic parameters of the class. Students wandered the room at their own pace, examined the works, and eventually selected one object to which they were drawn.

The assignment asked students to spend twenty minutes looking at their chosen object. Carefully examining the work and performing a formal analysis, they took notes on form, medium, legibility, line, depth, and other visual elements. Using these observations, students would later transform what they saw into prose. This experience was transformative because of the value of seeing a work in person and for a long time. It encouraged students to move beyond digital representations and slow the rushed pace of modern life.

For many, this was a meditative experience. One student was drawn to Angelica Kauffman's Telemachus in Sparta (1773). Over the course of the twenty minutes, she began to see signs of the artist within the painting. The physical reality of the object revealed brushstrokes and gestures that showed the artist's hand. This prolonged observation builds a respect for the care and time the artist devoted to each decision within the work. She could see both where the paint had aged and where the bright colors had survived. At the outset of her slow-looking, she began with the basic, broad elements and then gravitated toward the intimate choices of the artist.

For another student, Louis-Léopold Boilly's drawing Jeune femme lisant dans un paysage (Young Woman Reading in a Landscape) (1798) stood out. The ability to view the drawing from afar and then step forward into the details was unlocked by seeing the physical object. Many details invisible in reproductions came alive. As the minutes passed, she questioned the hairstyle and investigated lines and textures. There was immense value in seeing the real artwork.

During this time, students spoke with Hornstein, connecting the context of the course to the works in front of them. Curators answered specific questions about provenance, materials, and historical context, which actively informed student observations. The study room transformed into a space for interrogation rather than passive viewing.

Hornstein's upcoming Foreign Study Program in Paris—an early instance of a "+1 course" run during non-traditional times like winterim—will offer students further opportunities to practice "slow looking" in museums such as the Louvre, Versailles, and the Musée d'Orsay. This program, along with the recent experience in the Bernstein Center, forced us to rethink an all-to-common museum practice: rather than rushing to see everything, it encourages us to pause, spend time with what catches our eye, and, thus, to truly see.

- Kit Knuppel '28

Photo sources: Katie Hornstein and the Hood Museum of Art.