Aegean Center’s Art History “Class” at NYC’s MET, December 22!

Jeffrey and Jun at the Louvre in 2005

Art History means knowing the history of art – societal expectations, stylistic norms, symbols, social and religious context, commercial background, and more.  You need it to recognize skill, freshness, and intention, and to develop taste, which is to say personal preference based on knowledge and discrimination. And as history illuminates art, so art illuminates history. Art appreciation means having enough aesthetic sensitivity based on knowledge to form your own opinions – which is more than “I like/dislike it.”  So art’s history and appreciation are intimately connected.   And if you love art, it is a joyful lifetime study.

In the autumn of 2008 and spring of 2009, a lot of students who had studied Art History with Jeff, Liz, John, Jane, and Jun in Italy and in Greece, upon learning that Elizabeth and I were to be in New York City this Christmas, requested that we take them around the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  This would be a reunion based on study and recognition of what we all care deeply about.  Since this is the museum where Elizabeth and I, New Yorkers both, first learned about the art of the world, we have a special affection for it, and we agreed.

Our time in the City will be only a few days, and we perforce have many obligations, but we have now made a date.  We will meet students (siblings and partners welcome) who are able to join us on Tuesday, December 22, at 10:30 a.m., at the big central desk in the museum’s lobby. Our e-mail is carson@otenet.gr.

What should we look at first, the Girl with a Dove from Paros or Giovanni Pisano’s Pulpit Eagle from Pistoia?  Or maybe the giant crèche with its 18th-century Neapolitan carved wood figures under the tree?

See you there!

–Jeffrey Carson