Mission

Art History Teaching Resources (AHTR) is a peer-populated platform for educators who use visual and material culture in their teaching practice. Home to an evolving and collectively authored repository of open educational content, AHTR serves as a collaborative virtual community for art history instructors at all stages of their academic and professional careers.

The website supports learning in the classroom, in the museum, and online by blending traditional and technological approaches to pedagogy.  Inspired by colleagues at Smarthistory.org, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, and ArtMuseumTeaching.org, AHTR strives to create similarly engaging materials to support instructors and help them improve students’ understanding of art history and its value.

Content

The AHTR website includes a variety of pedagogical resources including adaptable lesson plans and downloadable powerpoint presentations, assignment ideas, and learning activities appropriate for museum and classroom settings. It promotes discussion, reflection, and exchange around new ways of teaching and learning in art history through the AHTR Weekly, a weekly blog featuring contributions from practitioners in higher education, museum, and K-12 learning environments. The E-journal Hub is a source for information about the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Art History (SoTL-AH) and a portal to Art History Pedagogy & Practice, our open-access academic journal housed on Academic Works, the Digital Commons repository of the City University of New York.

We welcome inquiries and suggestions related to new areas of content on the site!  Please contact us at info@arthistoryTR.org.

Copyright and Licensing

As a condition of publication on the ArtHistoryTeachingResources.org website, all contributors agree to the following terms of licensing/copyright ownership:

  • First publication rights to original work accepted for publication is granted to ArtHistoryTeachingResources.org but copyright for all work published on the website is retained by the author(s).
  • Materials available through ArtHistoryTeachingResources.org are published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY-NC). By granting a CC-BY-NC license in their work, authors retain copyright ownership of the work, but they give explicit permission for others to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy the work, as long as the original source and author(s) are properly cited (i.e. a complete bibliographic citation and link to the ArtHistoryTeachingResources.org website).
  • Authors are permitted to post their work online in institutional/disciplinary repositories or on their own websites. Pre-print versions posted online should include a citation and link to the final published version in ArtHistoryTeachingResources.org as soon as the material is available; post-print versions should include a citation and link to the website.
  • Authors may enter into separate, additional contractual agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the published version of the work, with an acknowledgement of its initial publication on ArtHistoryTeachingResources.org.

Advisory Board

Beth Harris is co-founder and executive editor for Smarthistory and faculty emeritus at Khan Academy. She was the first director of digital learning at The Museum of Modern Art, where she started MoMA Courses Online and co-produced educational videos, websites and apps. Before joining MoMA, Beth was Associate Professor of art history and director of distance learning at the Fashion Institute of Technology where she taught both online and in the classroom. She has co-authored, with Dr. Steven Zucker, numerous articles on the future of education and the future of museums, topics she regularly addresses at conferences around the world. She received her Master’s degree from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and her doctorate in Art History from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Renee McGarry is an art historian and educational designer and technologist who is passionate about making the classroom experience engaging, innovative, and creative for students and faculty alike. She has worked in online course development at the New York University, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, and the CUNY School of Professional Studies. She is a co-founding editor of Art History Pedagogy and Practice which is dedicated to exploring the scholarship of teaching and learning in the discipline of art history (SoTL-AH).

Mike Murawski is the founding author and editor of ArtMuseumTeaching.com, art museum educator, and currently the Director of Education & Public Programs for the Portland Art Museum. He earned his MA and PhD in Education from American University in Washington, DC, focusing his research on educational theory and interdisciplinary learning in the arts. Prior to his position at the Portland Art Museum, he served as Director of School Services at the Saint Louis Art Museum as well as head of education and public programs at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University. Mike’s postings on this site are his own and don’t necessarily represent the Portland Art Museum’s positions, strategies, or opinions.

Virginia B. Spivey is Director of AP Art History and Social Sciences-Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment at The College Board. She received her A.B. in art history from Duke University, and M.A. and Ph.D. in art history and museum studies from the joint program at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Museum of Art. She has over 20 years teaching art history in museum and higher education settings, including MoCA Cleveland, UNC-Asheville, Georgetown University, and the Maryland Institute College of Art; and as an independent educational consultant, she developed expert content and learning resources for clients such as Smarthistory.org and Pearson-Prentice Hall’s Higher Education Division. Her professional service includes tenure as chair of CAA’s Education Committee and a member of ISSOTL’s Advocacy and Outreach Committee. Prior to joining The College Board, she served on AHTR’s leadership collective as a contributing editor and editor in chief, and she spearheaded AHTR’s 2015 initiative to establish Art History Pedagogy and Practice, where she currently serves as co-founding editor.   

Steven Zuckeris is co-founder and executive editor for Smarthistory and faculty emeritus at Khan Academy. He was chair of history of art and design at Pratt Institute where he strengthened enrollment and led the renewal of curriculum across the Institute. Before that, he was dean of the School of Graduate Studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY and chair of their art history department. He has taught at The School of Visual Arts, Hunter College, and at The Museum of Modern Art. Dr. Zucker is a recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. He has co-authored, with Dr. Beth Harris, numerous articles on the future of education and the future of museums, topics he regularly addresses at conferences around the world. Dr. Zucker received his Ph.D. from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Advisory Board, Art History Pedagogy and Practice

See complete bios here

Susan Ball, Independent Curator and Non-profit Consultant
Rika Burnham, The Frick Collection 
Jill Cirasella, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Michael Cothren, Swarthmore College
Kelly Donahue-Wallace, The University of North Texas
Anne Kraybill, The Westmoreland Museum of American Art
Mike Murawski, Portland Art Museum
Andrea Pappas, University of Santa Clara
Nancy Ross, Dixie State University
Deirdre Diane Spencer, University of Michigan
Anne Swartz, Savannah College of Art and Design
Luke Waltzer, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Kathleen Yancey, Florida State University

Contributing Editors

AHTR is administered by a voluntary leadership collective of contributing editors who bring varied expertise in art history, educational practice, and digital technology, and maintain institutional affiliations in museums and higher education throughout the U.S.. 

Francesca Albrezzi (Contributing Editor, Social Media and Digital Humanities) has worked with museums for over a decade, including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (Washington, D.C.), the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (Paris, France), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles, California). She completed her Ph.D. in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at the University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA), and has received a Digital Humanities Graduate Certificate through UCLA’s Digital Humanities Program.  Albrezzi also has significant experience developing digital tools, such as The Getty Scholars’ Workspace™ for conducting collaborative arts research and preservation. She is a HASTAC Scholar (2016-2018), has taught Digital Humanities for four years at UCLA, and helped to produce an online digital art history textbook.

Michelle Millar Fisher (Co-Founder and Director) is a doctoral candidate in Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center, and currently The Louis C. Madeira IV Assistant Curator of European Decorative Arts and Design at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She has long been interested in the confluence of gender and design, the subject of an independent co-organized exhibition and co-published book, I Will What I Want: Women, Design, and Empowerment (January 2018), in conjunction with muca-Roma, Mexico City. From 2014-2018 she was a Curatorial Assistant at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where she co-organized, amongst others, the exhibitions Design and Violence, This Is for Everyone: Design Experiments for the Common Good, From the Collection, 1960-1969 and, most recently, the 2017 exhibition Items: Is Fashion Modern? and the accompanying catalogue. Previously, she worked at the Solomon. R. Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Parme Giuntini (Contributing Editor, Curriculum and Assessment) is an associate adjunct professor of Art History at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles where she was Assistant Chair of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Director of Art History for 17 years. Pedagogically, her key research focus has been curriculum design, assessment, and active learning strategies. Since moving to North Carolina in 2016, she has specialized in designing pedagogies for teaching her online classes in a virtual classroom. She hopes her work with AHTR will help broaden online pedagogies, applied learning projects, and encourage the development of better assessment practices. Her AHTR posts address flipping the classroom for the site here and she recently authored “MOOCs 2.0: Reviewing n.paradoxa’s MOOC on Contemporary Art and Feminism” for Art History: Pedagogy and Practice.  

Naraelle Hohensee (Contributing Editor, Writing about Art and Digital Humanities) holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and an M.A. in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University. A specialist in post-modern architecture and urbanism, she is also a professional digital media producer with experience in television production, print, and web design.

Renee McGarry (Advisor and Co-Founding Editor, Art History Pedagogy and Practice) is an art historian and educational designer who is passionate about making the classroom experience engaging, innovative, and creative for students and faculty alike. She has worked in online course development at New York University, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, and the CUNY School of Professional Studies.  

Alysha Meloche (Contributing Editor, SoTL and Education Policy) is a Ph.D. student and researcher at Drexel University’s School of Education. She received a Master’s degree in Art History from Temple University with a focus on Late Antique architecture. After spending several years as an adjunct teaching art history classes, she received two awards to design and improve classroom pedagogy. Her research interests include studying approaches to teaching art history that instill creative confidence and identity in students. She has also published and presented research related to skills that art history offers, such as visual and digital literacy. She currently serves on the graduate student council of the American Educational Researchers Association.

Karen Shelby ( Co-Founder and Director) is an Associate Professor of Art History at Baruch College, The City University of New York. She specializes in 19th c. European Art, 20th c. European and American Art, and Asian Art of southeast Asia and also teaches courses in the Art Market and Museum and Gallery Studies. She publishes on visual culture and the Great War. In 2015 she was a Visiting Professor at the University of Ghent supported by a Fulbright-Terra Foundation Award in the History of American Art.

Kathleen Wentrack, (Contributing Editor, Community College and Open Education) Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Art History in the Department of Art & Design at the City University of New York, Queensborough Community College. She holds a Master’s degree from the University of Amsterdam and a Ph.D. from the Graduate Center of The City University of New York. Kathleen leads the Collaborative Assignments and Projects High Impact Practice at Queensborough and has been actively involved in pedagogical initiatives at the College. She has published and presented at conferences in the United States and Europe on feminist art and art history pedagogy. Kathleen has served on the Committee on Women in Art of the College Art Association and is Co-Coordinator of The Feminist Art Project in New York.

Mary “Franny” Zawadzki (Contributing Editor, Distance Learning) holds a Master’s Degree in 19th century European Art from Hunter College, CUNY and a Ph.D. in 19th century American Art from The Graduate Center, CUNY. She specializes in illustration and the printed image, printing technology, and 19th century art and aesthetic education within public schools and the domestic interior. She taught art history at Parsons, Hunter College, Seton Hall, and most recently, Texas A&M University, where she was an online Instructional Assistant Professor and Online Coordinator in the Visualization Department at Texas A&M — College Station. In addition to online learning pedagogy, she is interested in experiential learning through the “gamification” of the classroom. She recently left her full-time teaching position to pursue an MLS with a focus on archival preservation and conservation at Queens College.

Founders

The site was founded in 2011 by Michelle Millar Fisher and Karen Shelby—both products of the CUNY Graduate Teaching Fellows program. Contact them at info@arthistoryTR.org.

Michelle Millar Fisher (Co-Founder and Director) is a doctoral candidate in Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center, and currently The Louis C. Madeira IV Assistant Curator of European Decorative Arts and Design at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She has long been interested in the confluence of gender and design, the subject of an independent co-organized exhibition and co-published book, I Will What I Want: Women, Design, and Empowerment (January 2018), in conjunction with muca-Roma, Mexico City. From 2014-2018 she was a Curatorial Assistant at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where she co-organized, amongst others, the exhibitions Design and Violence, This Is for Everyone: Design Experiments for the Common Good, From the Collection, 1960-1969 and, most recently, the 2017 exhibition Items: Is Fashion Modern? and the accompanying catalogue. Previously, she worked at the Solomon. R. Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Karen Shelby ( Co-Founder and Director) is an Associate Professor of Art History at Baruch College, The City University of New York. She specializes in 19th c. European Art, 20th c. European and American Art, and Asian Art of southeast Asia and also teaches courses in the Art Market and Museum and Gallery Studies. She publishes on visual culture and the Great War. In 2015 she was a Visiting Professor at the University of Ghent supported by a Fulbright-Terra Foundation Award in the History of American Art.