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 "At Oglethorpe, we're always told that teaching goes beyond the classroom,” said Christie Thiem ’07. “It's doing just that right now, expanding beyond the classroom to reach the streets and sidewalks of the Big Apple. It really doesn't get much better than this: a life-enriching experience in the company of good students and great professors."
Currently, 18 Oglethorpe students are participating in the university’s first mini-semester, a 12-day excursion to New York City to explore “What Counts As Art?” led by Associate Professor of Art Alan Loehle and Assistant Professor of Philosophy Simon Sparks. The students, who earn art or philosophy credit for the trip, are visiting museums, galleries and studios to learn directly from artists, curators and collectors.
"When we're faced with the question 'what is art?' there's really only one thing that artists and philosophers agree on: It's better in person," said Brent Rose ’07.
Katie Boone ’10 agrees. "After studying art at OU, it was amazing to see the actual artworks in person in New York."
“Alan and I have been teaching – quite literally teaching – for 12 or 13 hours a day for four solid days,” Sparks writes Thursday night, adding that they even taught on the street one day. “People passing by were most intrigued.”
"Not only is the art amazing here, but you can really see almost every aspect of cultural life,” said Alison Burt ’10.
Students are experiencing music and theatre while in New York. Small groups enter a lottery for tickets to sold-out performances of Wicked while others explore jazz clubs, meeting with owners and musicians.
“Some of the students met the jazz performers and, in a couple of cases, spent the entire evening talking to them, ultimately exchanging email addresses and being given copies of CDs and DVDs,” Sparks wrote. “Without exception, all of them were completely dazzled by the experience, one that I'd liken to having seen Picasso's Demoiselle D'Avignon in reproductions for one's entire life and then seeing it in the flesh (an experience, I should add, that many of them enjoyed today).”
 Mustafa Abdullah ’10 summarizes the trip this way: "All of us are attracted to a certain type of art and not to others. Going on this enriching cultural experience is teaching me what questions to ask myself in order to appreciate the principles and philosophy behind those sorts of judgments. This is a perfect example of hands-on learning at a liberal arts institute. This is Oglethorpe."
Monday update:
At the DIA in Beacon on Thursday, Sparks spent thirty minutes discussing Gerhard Richter's Six Grey Mirrors. He writes Sunday night: “I tried to help them to see how Richter is challenging our assumptions about the neutrality of our perceptual relationship to the world, forcing us to reassess our belief that, despite our individual perspective, we can still see the world ‘as it really is.’ For Richter, the world in which we find ourselves is one that's constructed by us and, in works like Six Grey Mirrors that sense is brought to the fore. Challenging? Yes. But also hugely enjoyable.”
On Saturday night, the choreographer Nichole Livieratos spoke to the students about modern dance before taking the group to a performance of a new piece by Doug Verone, Dense Terrain. Sparks writes, “I've little sense of how modern dance works. From the moment that we walked into the wonderfully restored B.A.M. theatre in Brooklyn, though, I was genuinely gripped. Another example of how this trip's exposing us all, Alan and myself included, to works and forms with which we've not yet been able to come to terms.”
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