Art History Teaching Resources (AHTR)

is a peer-populated platform for art history teachers. AHTR is home to a constantly evolving and collectively authored online repository of art history teaching content including, but not limited to, lesson plans, video introductions to museums, book reviews, image clusters, and classroom and museum activities. The site promotes discussion and reflection around new ways of teaching and learning in the art history classroom through a peer-populated blog, and fosters a collaborative virtual community for art history instructors at all career stages.

  • Announcement

    Call for Contributors! Lesson Plans on Women/Gender in the Arts

    September 18, 2024

    Art History Teaching Resources (AHTR) is pleased to announce that the organization has been chosen as the recipient of the 2024 Judy Chicago Art Education Award providing funding for Art History and Gender Teaching Resources. This is an annual award given by Through the Flower that honors Judy Chicago and her pioneering work as an art educator. AHTR is home […]

  • Announcement

    We Are Back!

    June 22, 2024

    Hello! After a hiatus of a few years, AHTR is back! Several of the original co-founders have moved on to new ventures and Covid created some screen fatigue. But the break was good. We are reinvigorated and excited to introduce new content, share some exciting grants, and continue to add to many of the information […]

  • Figurative sculptures (moai) on the island of Rapa Nui

    Lesson Plan
    Reflection

    Re-Teaching Rapa Nui

    October 30, 2021

    by Ellen C. Caldwell see the complete lesson plan here In January of 2020, just before the world would be unalterably impacted by COVID-19, I had the great fortune of traveling to Rapa Nui. Having taught art history surveys with an emphasis on Polynesian and Oceanic art for over a decade, I had dreamt of […]

  • Announcement

    Revealing Museums — Together

    February 19, 2021

    How do public art museums function today? Who selects the objects on display and defines the stories that are (de)constructed? What are the value systems underpinning how museum collections and exhibitions operate? Join a three-part series of live online conversations with artists, students, and staff of the MFA Boston, exploring some of the critical questions, structures and processes that guide our museum work today.

  • CAA
    SoTL

    CAA 2021

    February 5, 2021

    By Aly Meloche and Francesca Albrezzi February 10th marks the beginning of a CAA annual meeting that promises to be unlike any other. Normally, many of us look forward to the annual meeting as an opportunity to catch up with colleagues from around the world and hear new ideas for research and teaching. It’s strange […]

  • Online Teaching

    Baptism by Fire: Tips and Tactics from My First Time Teaching Remotely

    November 20, 2020

    While I’ve had many years of experience working with digital tools and creating digital art history projects, the transition to distance learning provided me with an opportunity to get creative and try some things that were new. Here are a few tips and tricks that I used, which others may find useful as we continue to teach and learn in an online environment.

  • Teaching Strategies

    Can COVID-19 Reinvigorate our Teaching? Employing Digital Tools for Spatial Learning

    November 14, 2020

    Spatial learning provides exciting possibilities, unhindered by remote learning (and perhaps unbound by it?), combining the brain’s natural aptitude for spatial thinking with the contextualization possible through virtual environments.

  • SoTL

    Conducting SoTL of an online art history course: using discourse analysis of discussion boards

    November 1, 2020

    For those of us who are just beginning to teach online, the concept of conducting scholarship of teaching and learning in addition to all of the other new responsibilities must sound about as much fun as running a virtual meeting while trying to homeschool new math.

  • Teaching Strategies
    Tool

    Rethinking the Curriculum by Rethinking the Art History Survey

    October 14, 2020

    s a Renaissance art historian I am keenly aware of the passion that can be generated through “classic” works of art from the traditional Western survey, but it is long past the time that we stop prioritizing such a model. Doing so would not only be good for art history, but it might also offer the chance to lead by example for greater inclusivity and equity in higher education more broadly.

  • Writing About Art

    Decolonial Introduction to the Theory, History and Criticism of the Arts

    September 14, 2020

    Written by Carolin Overhoff Ferreira, Associate Professor at the Department of History of ArtFederal at the University of São Paulo, this book “draws on texts from recent picture and image theory, as well as on present-day Amerindian authors, anthropologists and philosophers [to] question the power structure inherent in Eurocentric art discourses and to decolonize art studies, using Brazil’s arts, its theory and history as a case study to do so.”

  • Equity in Education
    Online Teaching
    Reflection
    Student Voices
    Teaching Strategies

    Student Voices: The Online Switch

    August 14, 2020

    Author: Xavier Lopez is a queer art history student who has attended San Francisco State University and Mt. San Antonio College. He is transferring to UC Berkeley this coming fall to pursue a B.A. in Art History. With a focus on Pre-Columbian Art, Lopez hopes to further educate himself on these Indigenous cultures along with […]

  • Assignment
    Lesson Plan
    Online Teaching

    Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Formal Analysis:Updating a Classroom Staple for the Age of Remote Learning

    August 10, 2020

    With some creativity and advanced planning, remote modalities can actually offer important silver linings to the art historical instructor. In particular, a well-designed, intentional rethinking of the classic formal analysis exercise has the potential to facilitate the inclusivity that we as instructors strive to foster.