VPS 395Topics in Visual Practices

Catalog

This course will cover various topics pertaining to the study of art and art history through the discipline of "Visual Practices." May be cross-listed with other disciplines and may be repeated when the topic changes. (Note: the topic description/s are included below only when VPS is the primary discipline.)<br> </br> Description for <strong>"INTERSECTIONS IN CONTEMPORARY ART AND ARCHITECTURE</strong>--In the last decades of the twentieth century, artists increasingly engaged in spatial practices to change existing definitions of art objects to enact institutional, cultural, and political critiques. This course examines artistic practices in a variety of media, which create dialogues with architectural form and urban space. This course, as all courses in Visual Practices, will include making and analysis projects.<br> </br> Description for <strong>"BUILDING ON DANA: HISTORY IN THE MAKING</strong>--This course will consider the past, present, and future of the Dana Fine Arts Building, including its various historical contexts: its position on the Agnes Scott campus, in the development of Decatur, in postwar urban planning in Atlanta, in postmodern architectural discourses (in spatial and symbolic dimensions) in the United States. We will look closely at the history of the building, its uses and transformation, with an eye especially toward changes necessary to ensure greater accessibility and new technologies to best support interdisciplinarity in the Creative Arts. Students in the course will become part of a collaborative team to design and produce an exhibition about the building to open in spring 2025. This topic requires an additional pre/co-req of VPS-250.<br> </br>