Inside the Senior Seminar: Rethinking Art History and the Contemporary Art Historian

The Senior Seminar in Art Historical Theory and Methods with Professor Elizabeth Kassler-Taub was offered this fall as the departmental culminating experience. Rather than concentrating on specific chronologies, geographical regions, or a set of prominent artworks, the seminar shifted its attention toward the art historical discipline itself, examining the history and evolution of art analysis from a critical, revisionist standpoint. In this course, students delved into the traditions of art historical practice, guiding assumptions, and belief systems that have defined the field over time and have been challenged to rethink how we position ourselves as art historians in the modern day. A significant part of our curriculum centered on addressing the urgent questions facing the discipline of art history today, including issues of colonialism, identity, ecocriticism, globalization, and the role of institutions. Our goal has been to become more critically aware and self-conscious viewers and readers, a process that has fundamentally reframed my own engagement with art history.

I can recall my very first introduction to art history in high school where we were taught to approach artwork through the three steps of description, analysis, and interpretation. Within the first few weeks of this seminar, I was forced to reconsider this established system, moving past traditional iconological practice and grappling with how and why these often western-centric art historical methodologies persist. I was confronted with questions of how we interpret meaning or purpose and quantify value in art, whether these prescriptions were even a necessary requirement, and why we may intuitively search for these normative properties. Further, in class discussions, we considered understanding art through the perspective of the artist, the viewer, the object in and of itself, the authoritative institutions of art, and where we situate the art historians in this schema. This involved confronting the assumptions surrounding an absolute truth in art history and I was forced to reflect my own methodologies and move beyond these established practices, reexamining my engagement with the discipline and uncovering the inherent assumptions surrounding fixity and absolute truth in art history.

A defining feature of this seminar was our work with the Hood Museum of Art, culminating in the teaching exhibition titled "Methods and Materials: Art History Now." This unique opportunity allowed us to apply the concepts we studied to objects drawn from the museum's reserves, pieces characterized as "hidden gems" because they are understudied, newly acquired, or infrequently exhibited. By focusing on these works, we were prompted to scrutinize art history's conventional narratives, look across boundaries of temporality and geography, and recognize unexpected connections. Each student selected one such object early in the term to anchor our major assignments: a wall label to display in the exhibition, a gallery presentation, and a final research paper and formal presentation. This assignment required us to execute an original art historical analysis while attempting to make sense of the object through a methodological lens.

My focus in the teaching exhibition was Nomusa Makhubu's Goduka from The Self Portrait Series, a composite photograph in which the artist stands before a projection of a historical colonial image. This artwork immediately presented an exciting challenge to tackle methodologies in photography, an area that I had yet to have the opportunity to explore during my academic career in art history thus far. Makhubu's insertion of her contemporary figure in a colonial photograph raised questions about art's temporality and its potential nonlinearity, a concept that Makhubu uses to draw attention to the persisting legacy of repressive systems and racialized visual conventions. The specific mediums of this artwork led me to consider the history of photography relating to power and subjugation in the construction of colonial regimes as well as how composite artwork, mixed media, and other innovative contemporary art forms, like Makhubu's work, are actively playing a role in the larger decolonizing and reframing of artistic practices. Through an in-depth engagement with the artwork, I realized that art historical analysis is not simply about interpretation but rather requires active intellectual wrestling with the multiplicity of lenses, voices, and intentions that are prompted by a work of art.

Our final gallery presentations were one of the highlights of this course. Being able to hear from my fellow classmates on their work and seeing the culmination of their progress throughout the term was beyond inspiring. Through our presentations I was able to watch all of our artworks in the teaching exhibition be brought into conversation with one another: seeing how anonymity in portrait photography is leveraged in one piece while actively rejected by another, how art operates when it references to other works or literary allegories, and how objects once rooted in functional or cultural use are situated within the context of art and the museum. Further, this teaching exhibition prompted students to consider the role of the museum as a political entity, as a site of historical memory, as well as the ways in which the museum and the hand of the curator shapes both object and artist identity. Our class conversations developed not only a comprehensive understanding of art historical methods and their intersectionality, but also a deeper awareness of how we engage with visual culture, the institutions of art museums, and the practices of the discipline at large. This seminar has empowered me to rethink how I study art history, seeing it not as a fixed body of knowledge, but as a living, evolving discipline that can, and ultimately must, continue to reinvent itself.

- Celine Choi '26

On view at the Hood Museum of Art, October 4 - November 22, 2025.

This exhibition is curated with Elizabeth Kassler-Taub in conjunction with ARTH 89.05: Art Historical Theory and Method. It is organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, and generously supported by the Harrington Gallery Fund.