Happy Holidays from AHTR!

We’re taking a break from the AHTR blog for the month of July in order to focus on uploading lesson plan content, and fit in a short vacation. We’ll be back in August, and we already have several excellent guest bloggers lined up for AHTR’s return who’ll be sharing new posts on a range of topics. The latest post on the AHTR blog opened the dialogue regarding on-line syllabi. In August, Marie Gaspar-Hulvat, who previously posted on “Introducing Students to Professional Practices,” will contribute her ideas on experiences in teaching without a textbook. There are several other great posts in the pipeline on using technologies like Tiki-Toki and MediaThread in the art history survey, and from new author and Parsons instructor Jesse Day who’ll share exercises that help get students talking and describing Line, Color and Form in the classroom.

There’ll also be some exciting new additions to the museums section of the site. Inspired by Beth and Steven’s great conversations over at Smarthistory.org, last week we enlisted the expertise of architectural historian Ted Barrow to create some engaging and illuminating conversations about the exterior architecture of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (we learned some great new things about a building we walk past and teach in regularly!). In the coming weeks we’ll do the same for the Guggenheim, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art. These conversations will be uploaded to the AHTR site with suggestions on how to incorporate them into a survey classroom experience.

At the moment, our museum sections is – by dint of AHTR beginning life in New York – very NY-centric. We’d love to include similar films from AHTR users inspired to do the same with museums in their locations, helping to underscore the diversity in the inception and creation of museums and museum collections. (Students could do the same creating their own short films exploring particular issues of a museum such as architecture or exhibition practice.) If this is something you’re already doing in your classroom, or want to, please get in touch as we’d love to post your videos! In addition, Thomas Shomaker, our filmmaker, is adding what he calls “wild sound” to the museum videos already uploaded to the site, which will help to underscore the site specificity of each museum within the overall framework of New York City.

Have a happy summer vacation, be in touch if you have questions, suggestions, or contributions for the site, and see you in August!